


Out There Saving the Galaxy

by mille_libri



Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-12
Updated: 2019-05-30
Packaged: 2019-06-09 11:32:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 36
Words: 46,951
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15266586
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mille_libri/pseuds/mille_libri
Summary: Leaving C-Sec to join a human's ship may just be the best decision Garrus Vakarian has ever made.





	1. Humans

Garrus Vakarian had never given much thought to humans. They were an increasing reality on the Citadel, to be sure, but there were very few of them in C-Sec, most of them in support positions—and Garrus tried to ensure that his path crossed that of C-Sec support as rarely as possible. The last thing he needed on any given day was any more red tape. As for outside of C-Sec … well, even when he wasn’t officially on shift, he was still working cases, so there wasn’t much to his life outside of C-Sec.

When he did think about humans, it was generally with little curiosity. They were vaguely asari-like in looks, but without the ridges that covered an asari’s skull. Instead they had strange threads of various colors that hung down from their head. Garrus found the concept of hair mostly strange, all things considered—who wanted part of your body constantly drooping off your head? 

It was the first thing he noticed about the one calling herself Shepard: She had no hair. Looking closely, you could see that her skull was covered with little dark sprouts, like a tiny black forest growing from the top of her head, but otherwise she was completely shaven. And tiny, just a little bit of a thing, really. But she carried herself like someone much taller, cutting through crowds as though she expected others to recognize her—and get out of her way. To Garrus’s surprise, mostly they did.

The other human accompanying them on their task, a male named Kaidan, must have seen Garrus’s confusion as they followed in Shepard’s wake, and he let Shepard pull a little ahead of them so he could speak softly. “She’s a hero in the Alliance. You’ve heard of the Skyllian Blitz?”

Garrus blinked. “That was her?”

“I know, you expect someone—bigger. But trust me, she can handle herself.”

“I’m sure she can,” Garrus responded, more to placate the human than because he believed it. Someone that small? How did she even hold a weapon? Although she had done fairly well in the Med Clinic, he reminded himself. Some of the best shooting he’d seen in a long time. He wouldn’t mind going up against her in a range sometime, see how she stacked up. Garrus was usually on top of the leaderboard in the annual C-Sec shooting competitions. 

Kaidan accepted his response at face value, and they continued following Shepard. 

As they did so, Garrus’s respect for her grew. She obviously was aware of her stature as a potential drawback in speaking with people, but she used it well, knowing when to keep her voice soft and respectful and seem like someone who needed assistance and when to be louder and more assertive. She made the big krogan Wrex back off, staring him down with her brown eyes, so large in her delicately constructed face. There was a lot of determination behind those eyes, Garrus was coming to understand, and that made a surprising amount of difference. He remembered hearing about her now. The Skyllian Blitz, and after it Torfan, had been quite a testing ground for the humans, and this Shepard, then fairly green, had made some tough decisions unflinchingly at a time when tough decisions needed to be made.

And she was going to do something about Saren. First among all those Garrus had spoken to, she believed what he told her and took seriously the threat that a rogue Spectre working with the geth represented to the galaxy. Just maybe the Shepard who had taken charge on Torfan would be able to track Saren down.

When she was made a Spectre, given her own ship to command and the charge to go after Saren, Garrus decided not to let her go without him. This was his project, one he had clung to despite all the attempts of his superiors to get him to drop it. He wasn’t about to let some human sail off into space on his mission, not without him along to be there when she brought Saren to bay. 

He caught up to her as she strode down the walkway next to the lake—she kept a fast pace, especially for the Citadel, but Garrus’s long legs matched her easily. “You’ll need a team.”

“I know it. And I’ve got no time to recruit one.” She left the words hanging in the air.

“So? What about it?”

“You asking to come aboard, Garrus?”

“Yes, I am, Commander.” 

Without breaking stride, she looked up at him, her brown eyes studying his face. “You going to have a problem taking orders from a human?”

“Only if I disagree with them.”

The brown eyes blinked, once, registering the reply, then she said again, “You going to have a problem taking orders from a human?”

Garrus took a beat to consider that. The choice was there, laid out as plainly as if she had drawn him a diagram. He would have to follow orders whether he agreed with them or not. That had never been his strong suit, as any of his former superiors could have told her. But he wanted Saren, wanted to nail him as badly as he had anyone since that damned Dr. Saleon had disappeared right out from under his mandibles. And if this was the price … He gave brief consideration to promising to follow orders and keeping his intention to go rogue if needed in reserve, but he had the uneasy sense that Shepard would have seen right through that. At last he nodded. “No problem, Commander.”

He had half-expected her to question him further, but after another sharp look at his face she nodded crisply. “Welcome aboard, then, Garrus. Glad to have you.”

“I’ll get my gear and meet you on the ship.”

“1650 sharp.”

“Aye, aye.”

He stopped by the C-Sec offices to turn in his resignation—a resignation his superior tried to look like he was sorry to be accepting, which he completely failed to manage—and to retrieve his gear from his locker.

A couple of fellow C-Sec officers were changing in the locker room when he came in. Clearly they had heard, because their conversation all but ceased as he pushed open the door.

Garrus nodded to them. “Laedrus, Medrin.”

“Is it true?”

“What? That I’m leaving C-Sec to join Commander Shepard’s crew? It is.”

“You’re going to be serving under a human?” Medrin laughed. “Does she know you don’t take orders?”

“If she’s going after Saren, which she says she is, I’ll take hers.”

“Wait.” Laedrus got to his feet, coming toward Garrus. He was a big guy, and he made himself bigger, puffing out his chest, as he got in Garrus’s face. “You’re joining forces with a human to go after a turian? One of your own people?” His tone left no doubt as to what he thought about that decision.

Garrus put his half-filled bag down, straightening to look Laedrus in the eye. “I’m joining forces with a Spectre to go after a criminal. Saren’s dirty, and he’s only going to get more dangerous.”

Laedrus opened his mouth.

“I’d think twice before you call me any names, Laedrus. Remember, I don’t work for C-Sec any more. I don’t have any regs to break, and nothing to lose.”

“You think Shepard won’t throw you in the brig?”

“She might, although I doubt it. But it would be worth it.”

Laedrus took a moment, then backed away—slowly, and with a swagger, like he’d meant no harm all along. “Well, don’t come running back if your human Spectre turns out not to have what it takes.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it. And don’t think you can climb aboard with us when we come back with Saren’s head in a jar.”

Laedrus and Medrin both laughed at that, and Garrus offered a faint chuckle to join them, letting them think he had been kidding. Whether Shepard could actually succeed in tracking down Saren, much less take him down completely, or make the decision to kill him rather than bring him in, remained to be seen, but at least he would be out there, flying through space, making a difference, instead of stuck here watching his life go by and helpless to do anything to change it. Who knows, maybe when this was all over, he’d re-apply for Spectre status of his own.

“You heard she recruited a quarian, didn’t you?” Medrin asked.

“Better keep your gear locked down. You know how quarians are. Oh, yeah, that reminds me—she’s got Wrex, too. Good luck with that.” Laedrus laughed unpleasantly. “Forget crawling back here begging for your job back—the krogan’ll take you all out two days out into space. He’s probably been paid to.”

“At least we’re getting him off the station. Hasn’t C-Sec been trying to get rid of him for months? Never managed. Now here’s Shepard, and she’s done your job for you,” Garrus pointed out. “And so quickly, too.”

“Weren’t you in charge of getting rid of Wrex, Garrus?”

“Nope. That was Drellius.”

“Oh, yeah. Wrex put him in the hospital.”

Garrus nodded. “Better to have a krogan on your side than against you.”

“A krogan’s only on your side until someone else pays him better to be on theirs.” Medrin looked genuinely concerned. “Watch your back.”

“Oh, I will.”

Garrus finished emptying out his locker, tossing the last spare clip in on top. “Well, boys, watch out for pickpockets. I’ll be out there saving the galaxy.”

“Saving the galaxy. Listen to him!” Laedrus shook his head. “Come on, Medrin. Time for our shift to start. Let’s go do some real work.”

“Yeah. So long, Garrus.”

“So long.” Garrus shouldered his bag and left the locker room. He strode across C-Sec to the elevator and punched the button that would take him up to the docking bay, where the rest of his gear had already been delivered. When the elevator doors slid closed behind him he let out a long breath, feeling more free already, and he hadn’t even left the Citadel yet.

When the doors opened again at the docking bay she was standing there waiting for him, her arms folded across her chest and her foot tapping. She smiled when she saw him, letting her arms fall to her sides. “I was sure you were going to be late. Now I owe Kaidan forty push-ups.”

“Maybe next time you won’t bet against me.”

“Maybe I won’t. You ready to get out there and find Saren?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

He followed her onto the ship without a backward glance.


	2. The Old Story

Garrus bent over the disassembled pieces of the Kovalyov, searching for the small telltale flaw in the metal that would explain its timing issue. He was focusing so sharply on the gun that he didn’t hear Shepard come up behind him. It was iffy whether he would have heard her anyway—she moved lightly even in armor. In her fatigues she was practically silent. When he finally noticed her out of the corner of his eye, her gaze on him as intently as his had been on the gun, he jerked his hands in surprise and gun parts scattered all over the floor.

“Damn,” he muttered.

“My fault,” Shepard said. “Let me help.”

Together they got down on the ground hunting for the pieces of the gun.

Without looking up from the floor, Shepard asked, “You always so jumpy, Garrus?”

“I am when people sneak up on me.”

“I didn’t sneak.”

“You could have fooled me.”

She smiled. “I suppose I do walk softly. You’ll get used to it.”

“Or you could say, ‘Hey, Garrus, what are you up to?’”

At that her brown eyes crinkled, warming with humor. “But then how would I sneak up on you?”

He chuckled. “Caught you, Commander.”

“I just wanted to see how you’re settling in. You miss the Citadel?”

“Oh, yes. Paperwork and regulations and routines—I live for them, didn’t I tell you that?”

“I can arrange for you to have paperwork to do, if you really need some.”

“Perish the thought.”

They laughed together. Garrus picked up a piece of the Kovalyov and blew the dust off it, scrutinizing it carefully. No, this wasn’t the problem.

“You could ask Ashley to help you,” Shepard suggested. “She’s good with guns.”

“With all due respect, Commander, a person should be familiar with their own weapons.” He glanced at her with curiosity. “You maintain your guns?”

Shepard nodded. “I try to. Sometimes … well, there’s a lot to do aboard ship, and I can’t take the _Normandy_ apart piece by piece, so I have to learn to trust other people to do their jobs and keep the equipment in its proper condition.”

“Good point,” Garrus conceded. He looked at the parts of the gun and sighed. “I’m going to have to start all over; I can’t find the timing problem.”

“Why not take a break and come back to it later, with fresh eyes?” Shepard suggested. “That often works for me.”

“Yeah, all right.” He carefully moved all the pieces into a box so they wouldn’t be lost while he was gone, and glanced down at Shepard. “You have someplace you wanted to talk, Commander?”

She laughed outright, her brown eyes twinkling. “Very perceptive. I did want to have a brief talk and make sure you’re settling into the ship all right.”

They walked toward the elevator together. “I’m settling in fine, Commander,” he told her. “I knew I would. Working with a Spectre had to be better than C-Sec.”

“How did you know that? Have you worked with a Spectre before?”

He shook his head. “No, never had the pleasure. But I know what they’re like.”

“Oh? We’re all the same?” She looked up at him. Judging from her expression, she wasn’t sure if that was a compliment or an insult.

“Well, you’re all free to handle things your own way, make your own rules. In my experience, people who aim for that kind of command are the type who like it.”

A frown crossed Shepard’s face. “Not always,” she said quietly, almost as if she were talking to herself—or afraid to admit it. “Sometimes things are put into your hands that you have to take, because if you didn’t they would fall and shatter.”

So she hadn’t been angling for the position. That was interesting to Garrus. He felt a kinship with her—he had washed out of Spectre training and ended up in C-Sec. But that was out of a lack of confidence in himself. He didn’t sense that Shepard lacked confidence in her abilities, so her reluctance to take on the role of Spectre must be something else.

“But it does have its advantages,” she continued, in a stronger voice. 

“Exactly. If I’m trying to take down a suspect, it shouldn’t matter how I do it, as long as it gets done.”

“I suppose … to a limited extent.”

“C-Sec takes it to the extreme,” he pointed out. “Protocol and procedure should never be allowed to get in the way of doing your job.”

Shepard nodded reluctantly. “Again, to a limited extent. Protocol exists for a reason—but the larger the bureaucracy, the more people there are in it who are likely to see the protocol as the job and not as what facilitates it.”

“Yes.”

“So no regrets about leaving?”

Garrus opened his mouth to say blithely that he had none, but … she had been honest with him, didn’t he owe her the same? “Some,” he admitted. “Cases I didn’t quite close, a sense of … having let down those who counted on me. But I’m working for those people now still, just in a different way. And when was another opportunity like this one going to land in my lap?”

Shepard smiled. “So much of life is about knowing when to leap for the rope as it goes by.”

“Not quite the way I would have put it, but … yeah, I suppose that’s it.”

The elevator doors slid open in front of them and they stepped in.

Shepard leaned back against the wall and looked up at Garrus with curiosity. “So, if you hate red tape and procedure, how did you end up a C-Sec officer in the first place?”

“Oh, I guess the same as most officers—I wanted to fight injustice, to help people.”

“Cut the crap, Garrus. You’re not a cliché, so why are you spouting them at me?” Their eyes met across the elevator. The doors slid open, and Shepard punched a button to close them again. 

“What if I told you it was personal?”

“Is that what you’re telling me?”

He held her gaze a moment longer, then dropped his, shaking his head. “It’s the old story. At least, it’s old for turians, and I imagine it’s the same all over the galaxy. My father was C-Sec. One of the best.”

“Now, that I understand,” Shepard said in a heartfelt tone.

“Your mother, so I hear?”

“Yes. She’s … something.”

Garrus nodded, understanding. “And nothing you do is ever enough.”

“Not so much that as just … there’s always the expectation that every step is just preparation for the next step.” Her cheeks pinkened faintly. “It sounds the same, but … she never criticizes, you know? Just sets the bar another notch higher.”

“My father criticizes.”

“That’s hard to live with.” Shepard let go of the elevator button, the doors sliding open. “Coffee? Or, the turian version of it?”

“Sure.” He followed her off the elevator toward the mess. Several uniformed crewmembers sat there, but they all got up as Shepard approached and made an attempt to look like they were just hurrying off on important business.

She smiled, watching them go. “I wish they weren’t afraid of me … but I’m glad they are.”

“Spoken like a Commander.”

Shepard chuckled. “I suppose. So, your father?”

“Yes. Growing up, I constantly heard about his accomplishments and saw his picture on the vids, and it was always accompanied by some relative putting their hand on my shoulder and saying, ‘Bet you can’t wait to follow in your father’s footsteps’ … or words to that effect.”

“I’m sure he’s thrilled you’ve left C-Sec.”

“Absolutely. Leaving my post to join a human and chase after a highly respected turian Spectre was just what he wanted from me.”

“He doesn’t believe Saren’s dirty?”

“He doesn’t believe chasing him down is the right way to find out; he thinks launching out on my own and leaving the rules and regs behind me will make me just as bad as I think Saren is.” Garrus picked up his mug and carried it to the table. He was developing a taste for human coffee, but he had to cut it heavily with a pink milk from Palaven to counteract his body’s reaction to it. “Or, to put it another way—one rogue Spectre is as bad as another rogue Spectre.”

“I’m a rogue, now?” Shepard lifted her eyebrows. “I suppose that’s one way to look at the situation.”

“It’s my father’s way. I … When I was younger, I wanted to be a Spectre, but—I let my father talk me out of it.” He didn’t know why he was telling her this. He rarely spoke of it. But he felt she ought to know.

“Really? You were going to be a Spectre?”

“Well … I was targeted as a potential candidate. Along with about a thousand other turian military recruits. Not a big deal, really.”

“But your father didn’t want you to be?”

“No. Rules and regs, remember? He thinks Spectres are dangerous. And maybe they are—look at Saren. But he’s not going to play by C-Sec’s rules, or anyone else’s, so if we’re going to get him, we have to be able to think like him.”

Shepard nodded. “I’m afraid that’s true. We’ll have to beat him at his own game if we have any hope of stopping him.”

“We will, Commander. I know we will.”

“Thanks, Garrus. I’m glad to have you with me.” 

“I’m glad to be here.”

They smiled at each other over the rims of their mugs.


	3. To Pass the Time

On the Citadel, where there was always something to do, Garrus had forgotten just how long a day could be aboard a ship. While Shepard’s team had an important task on their hands, and they kept collecting more places to go and more people to see before they could finally close with Saren, much of the work involved traveling between star systems. Even once they arrived at their destinations, Shepard only took two people with her planetside at a time, since that was all that could fit in the Mako. Which left a lot of free time hanging heavily on everyone’s hands between missions.

Garrus spent a lot of his time on the extranet, hunting for details about Saren that could be used against him, and a fair amount of time talking Prothean history with Liara T’Soni, who was an expert on the subject, and weaponry and various shipboard mechanics with Tali’Zorah, the quarian Shepard had picked up on the Citadel, and Ashley Williams, the human gunnery chief. Much of his remaining free time was spent in the weight room. Williams and Kaidan Alenko were in there a lot, as well, but no one spent more time there than Shepard. Garrus couldn’t tell if Shepard’s obsession with weights was to do with her stature, and making sure her strength far exceeded what one might expect of someone her height, which it did, or if was to do with burning off her energy and impatience while she waited for the Normandy to arrive at its destination. He shared that feeling—pushing his muscles to their limits at least made him feel like he was doing something to prepare for the inevitable showdown with Saren.

Today, however, while Liara and Ashley were planetside with Shepard hunting down a lost probe, those who remained on the ship were indulging in a different favorite way to pass the time—Skyllian poker. Wrex was a good player, if too aggressive, typical for a krogan. Kaidan played with erratic streaks of brilliance until he lost focus. And Tali was sharp and careful and precise in her betting, often coming out the winner. Garrus enjoyed pitting his skill against all three of them.

Kaidan was just raking in his winnings when Wrex cleared his throat. “So. Alenko. You and Shepard, huh?”

Garrus glanced from the krogan to the human. He had noticed the special softness in Shepard’s eyes, unusual for her, when she looked at Kaidan, but hadn’t realized anyone else was aware of it. Wrex was more observant than Garrus had given him credit for.

The human blushed. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Yeah, tell us another one,” Wrex grunted. “Can’t blame you. Shepard’s got a hell of a quad on her.”

As Tali dealt the next hand, Kaidan frowned, clearly trying to decide if the krogan had just insulted Shepard or not.

“It’s a compliment,” Garrus told him.

“What else would it be?” Wrex asked.

“So?” Tali looked expectantly at Kaidan. “What about it?”

“What? Oh, I’ll open for five.”

“No, I meant Shepard.”

“Oh.” He cleared his throat. “There’s … um … really nothing … I mean, there are regs, and …”

“Like regs have ever stopped anyone,” Garrus jeered softly. “Raise five.”

“Shepard lives for regs,” Kaidan said. “Her mother’s military, you know. Shepard grew up all over the galaxy; navy brat. The Alliance is all she knows.”

There was a silence as the other three considered that. Wrex folded, vocally unhappy about it, and Tali doubled the bet. Of course she did. Garrus sighed, looking at his hand, knowing he’d have to fold, too, and Tali would make a meal out of whatever Kaidan had, hesitantly as he was betting. Better luck next hand, he thought.

The game proceeded for another hour or so until Wrex got tired of losing to Tali and stormed off, muttering under his breath in his own language.

“That doesn’t sound nice,” Tali said, watching him go.

“Nothing in the krogan language does,” Garrus pointed out. “But if I were you, I might not win so often when he’s playing.”

He couldn’t tell behind the mask of her environmental suit, but he was pretty sure she was smiling. “Can I help it if he thinks he’s a better player than he is?”

“You can help taking him for everything he’s got.”

No doubt about it, there was a hint of a giggle in her voice as she said, “But where would be the fun in that?” She collected her winnings and was off.

“She’s too smart for her own good,” Garrus said to Kaidan once they were alone.

The human’s eyes rested worriedly on the door. “Maybe, but she really ought to quit pushing him.”

“Nah. Wrex likes it, or he wouldn’t keep playing. If we all let him win, he’d worry that we didn’t see him as an equal.”

“You think so?”

Garrus nodded. He hesitated, then said, “So, is it true? You and the Commander?”

Kaidan flushed. “Everyone seems to know everything around here.”

“Small ship, not enough to do … and …” Garrus paused.

“What?”

“No one wants to see the Commander get hurt.”

Kaidan sat forward, frowning. “What makes you think I would hurt her?”

“Come on, Lieutenant, we’ve all had these situations develop aboard ships, and they always end badly. Sooner or later all these close quarters—first it leads to strong feelings of one kind, then it leads to strong feelings of another kind.” Garrus shrugged. “We all like Shepard, and we don’t want to have to blow you out an airlock.”

“Hey! I would never hurt her. And besides … Shepard’s tougher than she looks.”

“She’d have to be. And I don’t doubt it. You don’t have to know her well to see how hard she works to be tougher than anyone else.” Garrus thought of her long hours in the weight room, her even longer hours poring over maps with Pressly and course trajectories with Joker. She worked herself to the bone. “Kaidan.”

“Yeah?”

“After this is over, after we’ve stopped Saren … take her somewhere, will you? Somewhere nice, for shore leave, and make her—make her enjoy herself.”

The human was looking at him keenly, and for some reason Garrus felt uncomfortable under that curious gaze. “Garrus,” Kaidan said slowly, “you don’t have a thing for the Commander, do you?”

“What?” Garrus was startled by the notion. “Of course not. She’s a human. How would that even work? No, never mind,” he said immediately, not wanting either of them to have that kind of an image form in their head. “Let’s just say I reserve thoughts of that kind for species I’m compatible with … and that if you make the Commander unhappy, even for an instant, you’ll wish you hadn’t.”

“Fair enough,” Kaidan agreed, “and understood. I’ll … do my best to treat her the way she deserves to be treated.” He smiled suddenly. “If she’ll let me.”

“Yes, there’s always that to be considered, isn’t there?” 

Kaidan nodded. “Wish me luck.”

“Oh, I do,” Garrus assured him, “I do.” But the sentiment felt hollow, and he wondered why. Kaidan was a good man, and he clearly thought the galaxy of Shepard, and she drove herself too hard and ought to have someone to teach her how to relax and let loose. All that was true, and yet Garrus didn’t feel nearly as supportive as he claimed.

Later, Shepard came back from the planet and joined them in the mess hall. As they sat over cups of coffee she told them all about the little metal monkey beings on the planet, one of whom had run off with the data module they’d been looking for. As she described their efforts to chase him down, her big brown eyes sparkled, her entire face lighting up, and Garrus found he couldn’t take his eyes off her. She was beautiful, animated like this. Would she ever think— He stopped himself. It was ridiculous even to speculate, he told himself. They weren’t even compatible, as he had said, and she cared for Kaidan.

He pushed the thought away firmly, but had the uneasy sensation that it wasn’t entirely gone.


	4. The Best at Everything

Garrus was surprised to hear gunfire when he entered the antechamber of the firing range. It was late enough that he had imagined most of the others would be in bed. He would have been in bed now, too, but an email from his father had him keyed up and irritated. Only some practice with the familiarity of the gunstock on his shoulder and the sight in front of his eye would occupy his mind enough to put the email away and let him settle in for the night.

Once he had accepted that someone else was down here, it was no surprise when he peeked through the window and saw who it was. It could only be Shepard, pushing herself when everyone else was sleeping.

He stood and watched her for a minute. She had a sniper rifle in her hands, and was carefully aiming and firing, shot after shot. She had grown frustrated—he could tell it in the slight jerk to the left the gun gave just before she fired it. That was her weak spot whenever she was tired or otherwise distracted. For all that, the shots were relatively close. She’d never win any high level marksmanship awards, but she was a solid shot. Good for support—if Commander Shepard would ever allow herself to be support, that is. As he watched, she lined up another shot. Her hands were tight on the stock and trigger, her knuckles white. It didn’t surprise him when the shot missed the mark by a good inch.

“Argh!” It was a sound of unbridled frustration, such as she would never allow herself to vent if she thought anyone else was nearby.

For a moment, Garrus thought about turning around and leaving, not letting her know that he was there. But he worried about her, pushing herself so hard in all the possible areas of expertise. He worried that she was pushing herself to the breaking point. He leaned forward before she could line up another shot, and touched the intercom. “You need to relax. You’re too tense.”

Proving his point, she jumped, nearly dropping the gun and banging her elbow hard on the counter in front of her. “Damn it, Garrus!”

“Sorry, Commander.”

“No, you’re not.”

He chuckled. “No. I’m not. But I’m not wrong, either. You have to be one with the weapon, feel it as an extension of your arm.”

She frowned at him through the glass. “I never had you pegged as someone into that kind of existential crap.”

“All right, it sounds kind of pretentious,” he agreed, “but it’s not wrong. You have to be as familiar with the weapon and its parts as you are with your own hand and how it works—it should be second nature to lift and sight and fire.”

“Hence the practicing,” she snapped.

“Yeah, but you’re trying too hard.”

Shepard’s frown had turned into a full-on glare. “There’s no such thing.”

“And there’s your problem.”

Tired as she was, small and soft and human, when her eyes narrowed and her lips thinned in the trademark Shepard scowl, Garrus was tempted to step off, to take it all back and apologize and tell her she was right and he was wrong. But since she wasn’t right, and he wasn’t wrong, and he was going to be putting his life and the lives of the others in her hands, he owed it to her to teach her better habits, even if she didn’t want to learn them. He hit the button to open the door into the range itself.

“Come to tell me more about my ‘problem’, Vakarian?” There was no humor in her voice.

“Yes, I did, Shepard. Because you’re pushing yourself too hard and training yourself into bad habits, and you’re too good for that.” He stood his ground, looking down at her, even as she glared up at him.

At last she sighed and nodded, her face relaxing. “You’re right. I wouldn’t accept posturing and defiance from anyone else in the face of something I knew more about than they did, and I shouldn’t ask you to accept those things from me. I’m sorry, Garrus.”

“Understood, Commander.”

She hesitated a moment, then said, “Zia.”

“Zia?”

“My name. It doesn’t seem fair of me to use yours and you not even to know mine.”

He shrugged, all the while turning the name over in his mind. Simple and unusual—like her. It suited her. “Chain of command, after all.”

“Well, you’re not exactly Alliance. More of an independent contractor. Like Wrex.”

Garrus chuckled. “I’m not sure he’d appreciate the comparison.”

“Maybe not.”

“All right … Zia.” He tested the name cautiously, relieved when she smiled. “Lesson one: There’s no use training when you’re exhausted. Go to sleep.” She raised her eyebrows at him, and he sighed. “Yeah, I didn’t think that would work. In that case, let’s see your firing stance.”

She picked up the rifle, lifting it to her shoulder and sighting through the scope.

Gently, Garrus reached out and touched her knuckles, then her shoulders. “Tension here and here. Since you’re creating that tension through nerves rather than focus, you’re not controlling it, so it’s going to affect your shot.”

“I thought it gave me more control.”

He shook his head. “Tightening up strains the muscles. You need to aim with confidence, to know for sure where your shot is going to land.”

She visibly tried to relax and took the shot. Marginally better than before. Garrus picked up his own weapon and showed her a few practice shots, letting her rest her hand on his shoulder to feel where and when it tensed and relaxed. Something in the light touch of her small, soft hand made him want to tense up in his own turn, and for reasons he strongly suspected had nothing to do with her role as his commander. He reminded himself that any thoughts in that direction were ridiculous and impossible, but it still took all his considerable skill to retain the very looseness he was trying to demonstrate.

At last, noting the dark circles under her brown eyes, he reminded her that she had a lot to do tomorrow. “You’re a fine shot, anyway, Shepard. Better than Kaidan or Wrex, that’s for sure.”

She smiled. “I don’t think ‘fine’ is good enough.”

“You can’t be the best at everything, Shepard.”

“Can’t I? I think I missed that memo.”

“I’ll write you a new one and you can hang it in your quarters. A good leader utilizes the skills of the soldiers at their command, and doesn’t wear themselves to the bone trying to eclipse those skills.”

“That a turian philosophy?”

He chuckled. “As a matter of fact, it is. Maybe I’m a better turian than I give myself credit for.” Certainly he was a better turian than his father gave him credit for, he believed, and in the thought found the peace he had been looking for when he came in here tonight.

Shepard yawned widely, and followed it with a laugh. “All right, maybe you’re right and I have other things to do that are more pressing than being a better sniper than you are. But someday, Garrus Vakarian, you mark my words, when I have the time, I’ll get there.”

Garrus shook his head. “If I know you, Zia Shepard, and I think I do, you’ll never be someone who has that kind of time.”

She sighed and nodded her agreement. “You’re probably right … but it’s nice to think about. I could use a good long rest with nothing better to do than beat you in a marksmanship contest.” At that, she said good-night and left him there. He fired a few more rounds just to say he’d done it, and went to bed himself.


	5. The Life of a Human

Garrus followed Shepard through the science lab, guns at the ready. Liara had gone around a stack of crates to their left, in hopes of flanking the husks they knew would be in here waiting for them. It was eerily silent other than the _whump whump_ of a centrifuge still turning somewhere inside the facility. 

It had become clear that the entire population of Chasca had been turned into these mindless beings. They attacked seemingly out of nowhere, for reasons Garrus didn’t entirely understand. Did they want brains, like those human zombie vids he’d seen? Or did they eat flesh? If they did, they were remarkably indiscriminate—they didn’t seem to differentiate between human and asari flesh and the hard plates of a turian and whatever lay under Tali’s environmental suit or the densely packed muscles of the krogan. Maybe they were angry at being husks and just wanted revenge, or maybe it was some programming from the spikes that impaled them and turned them into these creatures. In the end, it didn’t matter—the husks would attack because it was what they did, and Garrus and Shepard and Liara would kill them both in self-defense and because it was kinder than leaving them to live like that. He wasn’t even sure what husks lived on. Would they eat each other?

“Garrus,” Shepard hissed. “Snap out of it.”

He hadn’t realized he had let his gun hand drop as he tried to puzzle out the realities of life as a husk. Now he snapped it up again, leveling the shotgun and looking around, trying to calculate where they would attack from.

And then he had his answer—everywhere. Husks were swarming toward them faster than Garrus could keep track of. He swung the shotgun toward one and blew its head off, but then surprisingly strong fingers had latched on to the weapon and were trying to tear it from his hands. He yanked it back and smashed the gun across the husk’s face, sending it staggering back. Garrus leveled the shotgun and blew a hole through the middle of the husk’s chest.

From the corner of his eye he could see the blue glow of Liara’s biotics as they lifted a husk in the air and slammed it back down on the ground, and the sound of shots being fired came from Shepard on his other side. But the rhythm of the shots was erratic, not the steady stream of fire he was used to hearing from her. “Shepard,” he shouted over the groaning of the husks around him. “You all right?”

No answer.

He elbowed a husk in the throat and kicked another in the knee, trying to get enough room to aim the shotgun, then decided the hell with it, dropped the shotgun, and drew his pistol. That went faster. Turning, aiming, firing, watching husk after husk fall and trying not to think that days, maybe weeks, ago these were people with lives and loved ones. 

As the last one dropped, Liara came up to him, panting. “I think that’s the last of them.” She shivered. “It’s eerie to think that we’re the last living beings on this planet.”

They probably weren’t—bugs or rodents or microbes of some kind surely still lived here somewhere—but Garrus understood what she meant. He looked over her head, expecting a remark from Shepard, but none came. He couldn’t even see Shepard. “Commander?”

No answer.

Liara glanced worriedly in the direction Shepard had gone. “Do you think she went into the back rooms?”

“Even Shepard wouldn’t go off alone,” Garrus said, trying to believe it. Shepard too often seemed to think she was indestructible. 

Carefully he and Liara moved among the stacks of crates surrounding them. “Commander?” Garrus called softly. “Shepard?” He didn’t know why he was keeping his voice down, except that the silence in the room was oppressive. “Zia?” He kept the word soft, for some reason not wanting Liara to hear him call the commander by her first name.

A faint moan answered him, and he moved faster, coming around a corner to see Shepard lying on the ground, holding her head. Bright red blood showed on her white gloves, and Garrus’s heart seemed to stop beating and then began again, thudding painfully in his chest. He and Liara went on their knees next to Shepard.

Liara moved the commander’s hand away from her head. “That looks bad.”

“Shepard, can you hear me?” Garrus asked insistently, willing her to open her eyes and look at him. “Shepard!”

No response. Blood was pulsing sluggishly from the wound on the side of her head. Liara frowned at it. “I don’t have any way to pack that off.” 

Garrus slipped his arms underneath Shepard’s still figure. “We need to get her back to the _Normandy_. Can you handle the Mako?”

“Yes. I’ll radio Joker.” Liara moved ahead through the science facility, keying the comm link in her collar. “Joker, come in. Joker, are you there?”

Static, and then Joker’s familiar voice, sharp and concerned. It faded as Liara entered the hallway that separated the main room from the front entrance. Garrus got to his feet, tucking Shepard against his chest. For all her work in the weight room, she was very light in his arms. Too light for someone as substantial as Commander Shepard. “You hang on,” he told her fiercely, his feet moving swiftly down the carpeted hallway. 

He lifted a foot and kicked the plate to open the main door. Liara had the door of the Mako standing open, the engine rumbling. “Joker’s five minutes out,” she told him.

“Did you tell him to step on it?”

“I didn’t have to. As soon as he heard me speaking instead of Shepard— He’s pushing the _Normandy_ to its limits.”

“Good.” 

Between them, they carefully maneuvered Shepard into the Mako. Garrus should probably have let Liara hold her and handled the Mako himself, but somehow, and for reasons he didn’t want to consider, he couldn’t bear to let go of the small, still form. She was breathing, but shallowly. “Does Dr. Chakwas know? Is she meeting us in the hold?”

“Yes.” Liara slammed the door of the Mako shut, glancing over the controls quickly. Shepard so rarely agreed to let anyone else drive that none of them were as familiar with the vehicle as they ought to be. Garrus intended to have some strong words with Shepard about training her people for emergencies like this one once she had recovered.

He looked at the wound in the dim interior light of the Mako. It was still bleeding, slowly, as the blood coagulated around it. He wished he knew more about human physiology, enough to determine from the color of the blood how much damage there had been. In a turian, he would have known the difference. Stripping off his glove, he gently touched the area around the wound. Shepard shifted under the touch, moaning in pain, and he withdrew his hand immediately, his fingers brushing across the stubble of her hair.

It surprised him by being soft to the touch when he would have expected a sharper, more bristly texture, and he couldn’t resist touching it again, resting his hand on the top of her head, well away from the wound, hoping she would feel the touch as a comfort. 

“Zia.” He kept his voice low so as not to distract Liara from her struggles with the Mako’s controls. Whatever she was saying about the machine’s designers was far from complimentary. “Zia,” he said again, slightly louder, bending his head to be closer to her. “Look at me, Zia.”

There was no response, and he drew in a deep breath. What if the wound was even more serious than it looked? What if she— 

Garrus tried to tell himself that he couldn’t imagine what would happen to the pursuit of Saren without her, that he didn’t know who would step into her place, but he knew that there was more to it than that. He didn’t know what he would do without her. In a fairly short amount of time, she had taken a place in his life that he hadn’t even known was there until now, when he was forced to contemplate the vast emptiness that would be left if she wasn’t in it any longer. “Don’t … don’t you die on me,” he told her, hoping she could hear him.

Beneath him, he could feel the propulsion jets roar into life, the Mako taking off. He realized he had never managed to buckle himself, or Shepard, in. If Liara made a mistake, they might both die. But the asari’s hands were firm on the controls, her knuckles a dark purple with the strength of her grip. 

“How is she?” Liara asked.

“She’s still with us.”

“Good.”

Garrus stroked his hand once again across the softness of Shepard’s dark hair, praying to spirits he wasn’t sure he believed in, and who he didn’t think cared a straw for the life of a human, to keep her with him.


	6. Whenever She Needed Him

Garrus was stretched out under the Mako, tinkering with the firing system, enjoying the silence of the cargo hold. It was late; everyone had gone to bed, other than Wrex, who just threw his bedroll behind a stack of crates, and the lone ensign whose job it was to patrol the area. Alliance regs, Garrus assumed, to ensure that the aliens on the ship didn’t damage anything. Pesky aliens, he thought with an inward chuckle.

He had gotten used to the rhythm of the ensign’s footsteps, and so he noticed when it had been longer than usual since he had last heard them. Sliding out from under the Mako, he found he wasn’t surprised to see Shepard sitting there.

“You tell Ensign Schaeffer to take five?”

“I did.” She leaned back against the wall, closing her eyes. “It’s been a long couple of days.”

“So you came to the cargo hold? I’d have gone to my comfortable bed, I think.”

“You didn’t, though. You came down here to …”

“Calibrate the Mako’s firing systems.”

“Naturally.” She managed a smile. Garrus could see the dark circles under her eyes.

He moved over to sit next to her. “How are you holding up?”

Shepard sighed, rolling her head back and forth on the wall in lieu of shaking it. “I’ve been better.”

“You won, Shepard. You beat Saren; you destroyed his breeding grounds.”

“But at what cost, Garrus? Was it worth it?” She opened her eyes, looking at him as though she truly expected him to have the answer. 

He wished he knew what to say to her. It tore at her that they’d left Ashley Williams behind on Virmire to either be killed by Saren’s forces or blown up by their own nuke. Most of the salarian forces had been left behind as well, and he knew Shepard felt that as a personal failure. But Ashley had been part of their team, someone they had all worked with and trusted. She had expected them to have her back. But she had also been a soldier, just as the salarians had been, and she had known the risks of her job. “If it had been you, would you have wanted us to risk the lives of the entire crew to come for you?”

“I’d have told you to get the hell out of there.”

“So would Ashley. She did tell you that, didn’t she?”

“Yes. That’s what she said. And I know it was the right decision, but—“

Garrus knew what she wasn’t saying. Kaidan. He had taken Ashley’s death hard, especially since the decision had come when Shepard had been forced to turn back to protect him. That she had also needed to come back to protect the nuke and make sure it wasn’t prevented from destroying the facility wasn’t something the lieutenant appeared to have considered. In the meeting after they had left Virmire, Kaidan had all but openly accused Shepard of having abandoned Ashley because of her feelings for him. Garrus had been embarrassed for both of them. It was an unprofessional thing for Kaidan to have said, especially in front of others, but Shepard’s reaction had made it clear that he wasn’t entirely wrong, either.

“You can’t make him be okay with it,” he said to her gently. “He’ll come around. He—he cares about you.”

“He can’t really think that he was the only reason, can he?”

“If he thinks he was any reason at all, he’ll feel guilty, and he’ll lash out until he has the chance to work through what he feels and come out the other side.” Garrus understood where Kaidan was coming from; the human’s experience in combat had been relatively limited, and he had been faced with few deaths. Garrus was similar—he had spent most of his career with C-Sec, and was fairly sheltered, but he was a turian, and turians were steeped in combat and its dangers. Humans, on the other hand, were not, even soldiers, and it always took them longer to get used to losing people. Shepard had been through her trial of fire in the Skyllian Blitz; she understood what it meant to be in command, and what you might have to order others to do. But a squad was different than a single person; holding a position and watching those around you die in the process was different than having to tell someone over the comm link that instead of coming back for them, you were going to save someone else. With Ashley, it had been personal—Shepard had been forced to choose between two crew members. That wasn’t something they trained you to do in leadership school, Garrus thought—at least, not if you weren’t turian.

“What if he doesn’t work through it? What if he never forgives me?”

It was a side of her few people ever saw, Garrus knew, and he understood and appreciated the level of trust it took for her to bring something this close to her heart—and this unmilitary—to him. But he couldn’t help thinking that he wasn’t the right person to be giving her advice on her relationship, not when he still felt that disquieting inexplicable impossible attraction to her pop up when he least expected it, and that undeniable stab of jealousy that she might bring her problems to him, but it was Kaidan she looked to as a partner. It was ridiculous, he knew that—turians and humans weren’t at all compatible, as far as he knew, and she’d never shown any indication that she thought of him in that way in return—but he couldn’t help the occasional twinge of longing. He’d never known anyone quite like her before. He was sure he would never know anyone like her again.

Which left him at a loss as to how to answer her question. And she was still looking at him, her brown eyes wide and soft and vulnerable, trusting that he would know what to say. Why she should, he didn’t know—it wasn’t as though he knew the first thing about sustaining a relationship, after all. But she was hardly going to talk to Wrex about this, and Tali’s case of hero worship was such that she wouldn’t accept any flaws in her adored Shepard. While Liara might have greater insight, she had made overtures to Shepard early on in the voyage, overtures Shepard had not returned. The two of them had gotten past that and were good friends; nevertheless, the asari was hardly someone Shepard could confide in about a romantic dilemma. That left Garrus. And he had made it a practice to be honest with her from the start, finding her perspective different enough from his that it challenged him to think in new ways. 

“Garrus?” she asked, apparently having realized he was lost in thought and not going to answer.

He drew his attention back to her. “Sorry. I was just … thinking.” 

“And?”

“And you know Alenko. He’s impulsive, emotional. Feels things deeply. He has to think about these things. But, at the heart of it, he cares about you, very much. He’ll come around.”

“And if he’s right?” she whispered.

“Ashley knew the risks when she went with the salarians. She told you to go back for Kaidan and protect the nuke rather than come for her. It was her decision as much as yours. Honor her courage by owning your decision, by standing behind it, by being certain of it.”

Shepard nodded slowly. “Yes. You must think I’m so foolish, coming down here wringing my hands this way.”

He looked her in the eye. “Zia, I think you push yourself to the breaking point every day. I think you don’t sleep nearly enough, you work too hard without a break, and you carry the weight of the galaxy on your back, as well as the welfare of everyone on your team and your ship. All of which leaves you with no resources left for emergencies. You wouldn’t be a part of organic life if you didn’t break down and doubt yourself, and others, occasionally.”

“You’re probably right,” she said at last, reluctantly.

“Probably? I am right. Which is why you came down here for my wisdom and guidance.”

“That’s what you think. I came down for the peace and quiet. Time alone with the Mako.”

“Yes, I know how much you care for it,” he said dryly, thinking of the way she cursed the thing as she tried to drive it up mountainsides that were too steep for it to go.

“As a reminder that I’m not always in control of everything, it’s incomparable.”

“Good point. Maybe I should leave the two of you alone, then.”

She shook her head, leaning it back against the wall and closing her eyes. “You can go back to your calibrations. I’ll just sit here for a minute.”

“All right.” But he didn’t. He sat beside her and watched as she fell asleep sitting there, glad that she could finally relax enough to allow herself to forget Virmire. And he cursed Kaidan Alenko for being lucky enough to have earned her affection and self-involved enough to turn his back when she felt most vulnerable. Well, Garrus would be here in his stead, he vowed, whenever she needed him.


	7. Get It Together, Vakarian

Garrus reached for the bottle of brandy, upending it over his glass and letting the last of the liquid trickle out, making sure to get the last drop. The bottle had been full not that long ago, he remembered somewhat hazily. He had waited until his father left for the base and then started drinking, and here it was the middle of the day and the bottle was empty. Was it the middle of the day? He looked up at the window, squinting, to determine the light level. Yes. Time was passing at its usual glacial pace. And to think he used to complain that the days were long on the _Normandy_.

Thinking of the _Normandy_ had been a mistake. He tossed the empty bottle behind him and drained the last of the brandy from the glass. He considered tossing it, too, but he might want it later. He _would_ want it later, who was he kidding? Massive quantities of alcohol was the only way he was able to close his eyes and not see the flaming pieces of the _Normandy_ falling all around him, not hear the squealing scream of metal coming apart—not to mention the shrieks of the wounded. And, worse, the emptiness where the voice of Shepard should have been.

He had stuck it out with the rest of the survivors for a little while after the crash, but it had become clear very quickly that the Alliance wanted them all gone. The Alliance crew had been reassigned to different ships within weeks of the crash, and the aliens had been politely but firmly provided with a final deposit of credits into their accounts and sent on their way. Liara was already gone by that point, having received a mysterious message of some kind that had distressed and excited her in equal measure, as far as Garrus could tell. Credits in hand, and without Shepard to hold them, Tali had gone back to the Migrant Fleet and Wrex had returned to Tuchanka. Which had left Garrus at loose ends. Kaidan had been reassigned, too, and Garrus hadn’t minded that. For all that he and the lieutenant were friends … Kaidan’s vocal grief over the loss of Shepard had rankled within Garrus. Graceless and unbecoming as it was to be jealous that someone else had a better right to mourn the dead, that was exactly how Garrus had felt. It had been a relief to have some separation from the way Kaidan had carried his broken heart on his sleeve.

He had tried C-Sec briefly, but the Citadel had changed so after Sovereign’s attack that it no longer felt like home—and C-Sec hadn’t changed enough. The red tape was still thick enough to trap a person for the rest of his life. No, C-Sec was not going to be a long-term solution. Or a short-term one, for that matter. So he’d left.

Without a better option, he had come home to Palaven, where he was staying with his father. He had spent a week drinking his way through the days and in the evenings doing an elaborate dance to keep his father from signing him up in the turian military.

Shepard would understand that, wouldn’t she? he thought. She knew he had never been meant for the regimentation of military life. She had, though—or she had tried to be. He’d never met anyone who worked harder at being the best soldier they could be … and since he was a turian, that was saying something. 

Tapping his omni-tool, he pulled up the extranet, typing in Shepard’s name. He scrolled through the news reports about her death, and the features on her battle in the Citadel. They were already whitewashing that, blaming Saren as a rogue Spectre allied with the geth. All trace of Sovereign, any mention of the Reapers, had been thoroughly scrubbed. 

There it was. Shepard’s official bio, or as official as it got unless you intended to hack the Alliance database. Zia Shepard. Military kid. Dragged from base to base all her life. There was a fair amount about her mother, Hannah Shepard, but nothing about a father. Garrus wondered about that. Had he been left behind in the course of Shepard Senior’s career? Been killed in the line of duty? Shepard had been a small child during the First Contact War, so it was possible. Garrus’s own mother had died young, shortly after the birth of his sister. He had been raised by his father, aided by a succession of nursemaids. He wondered how it had been for Shepard, raised only by her mother. He thought about asking her.

The reality that he could never ask Shepard a question again struck him like a blow to the chest. He gasped audibly with the impact, his throat closing and aching. Automatically he reached for the glass, getting it halfway to his mouth before he realized it was empty, no relief or comfort to be found inside it. Staring at the bottom of the glass, discolored from the brandy, Garrus asked himself if this was really how he wanted to respond to her death, if she would approve of how he was spending his days.

She wouldn’t, he was sure. He could practically hear her now. “Get it together, Vakarian.”

“I’m trying,” he muttered to the shade of her.

Pulling up the extranet picture of her mother, who looked just like an older Shepard with hair, he wondered if she also had a similar voice. His finger hovered over the vidchat button. Maybe he should call her mother, tell her …

Tell her what? That he had been Zia’s shipmate? That she had occasionally confided in him? That he found himself utterly lost without her? That he had no right to feel that way, because she had loved someone else? He could only imagine Hannah Shepard’s reaction to that amount of unnecessary soul-baring.

Clearing the browser, Garrus moved his hand away from the omni-tool. It had been a foolish impulse to use it in the first place. Zia was gone; all the extranet entries in the galaxy couldn’t change that. Neither could bottle after bottle of turian brandy. Soon he was going to have to make a decision about what to do with his life, how to move forward. 

He had never seriously considered the turian military; the past week had convinced him that he couldn’t live with his father, and being under his father’s command would be a nightmare. He could go back to C-Sec, try it one more time. Probably he should. He had been good at the work, even if he hadn’t enjoyed the protocols and procedures. Shepard had been all about the rules and regulations, the trappings of the military lifestyle. Maybe he owed it to her to give it another chance.

Aimlessly, he hit a few buttons on the omni-tool, ending up on a newsvid site, watching Shepard’s old friend Emily Wong report on some kind of gang activity on Omega.

Omega? Garrus sat up straight, forcing himself to pay attention to the vid. Omega. Haven of criminals, hotbed of gang activity. An enterprising turian could do some good work cleaning up there, especially if he emulated his former commander and gathered a good team around himself. And there would be no one hovering over his shoulder quoting chapter and verse.

Clicking off the omni-tool, he got to his feet, waiting until his knees stopped wobbling beneath him. He would go to Omega, and he would make a difference, and he would forget the Normandy and Zia Shepard … someday.


	8. The White Hard Suit

Garrus lifted the rifle to his shoulder, sighted through the scope, and fired. The merc went down. It wasn’t as clean a shot as he would have liked, but the merc was wasn’t getting up again, which at this point was the goal.

Sighing, he put the rifle down, and rubbed his eye and the back of his neck. It had been a long day. Maybe a long couple of days—he’d lost track. And the mercs just kept coming. The gangs were hanging back, feeding these hirelings to him a few at a time, wearing him down. It was a good tactic, he had to admit. He was tiring, his hands shaking just enough to mar the precision of his aim. He had given up on thinking about what he would do when he got out of here, imagining the revenge he would take when he found Sidonis, who had betrayed him and caused the death of his whole team. It was increasingly unlikely Garrus would ever get out of here. He would take as many of the gang members and mercs as he could with him, but he would die eventually, overborne by greater numbers. Archangel would be remembered on Omega, if only for having united all the gangs into a single force. Would Garrus Vakarian be remembered? Probably not. Maybe by those who studied the battle of the Citadel, whatever few bits of that story that might still remain after Sovereign and the Reapers had been scrubbed from it. He was proud of that, and of his team, and the work they had done here on Omega. That would have to be enough.

Lifting the rifle once more, he trained the scope on a merc moving swiftly between two crates. Squinting, he took another look. Huh. This one was a salarian. Not a lot of salarian mercs out there—and this particular salarian was dressed more like a doctor than a fighter. Garrus adjusted the scope and trained it on the salarian’s face. That was a doctor—it was Mordin Solus, who ran a clinic in another part of Omega. Garrus had heard that section was quarantined, overrun by some kind of plague. He hadn’t paid too much attention, occupied with the loss of his team and his increasing persecution by the gangs. If Solus was here, the plague must either have run its course or killed enough people that there was no further need for a clinic.

Garrus considered putting a bullet in Solus’s chest. It would be relatively easy to do—the white coat he wore was undoubtedly armored, but wouldn’t be nearly as effective in stopping a bullet as a hard suit, he had to imagine. Then he thought better of it. After all, if someone had to take him out, he thought he’d prefer it to be a salarian doctor who had at least tried to help people than some hireling, or a member of the Blue Suns or Eclipse or the Blood Pack.

He swung the rifle slightly to the right, to the broad chest of the man with the salarian. Human, this one. Typical merc size and shape, but he moved like he’d had formal military training. Well, no surprise there. The Alliance had a lot of dissatisfied former soldiers out there, selling their training to the highest bidder. Usually they tended to be more furtive than this man, though. And his hard suit—there was an insignia there that Garrus recognized. Cerberus. 

Pulling back from the scope, Garrus rubbed the back of his neck again as he considered that. What the hell was a Cerberus guy doing coming after him? It wasn’t Cerberus itself—even if they wanted Archangel dead for some reason, they wouldn’t send one guy. They’d take over the whole damned operation. Briefly he considered the possibility that this was an ex-Cerberus guy, but you really didn’t meet a lot of those. Cerberus had a way of taking care of its more failed soldiers—certainly, no one who had walked away from Cerberus would still be wearing armor with the logo proudly emblazoned on it.

And the Cerberus guy was with the salarian, which was all kinds of wrong. Cerberus experimented on other species, they didn’t work with them.

Really, none of this made any sense at all. On the other hand, the mystery of it had woken him up a bit, sharpened his focus. He snapped off a quick shot at a merc just climbing over the barricade, seeing him fall backward, arms windmilling, and then loaded a concussive round, sending it square into Cerberus Guy’s chest. It knocked him back a bit, but didn’t do anything more.

Behind Cerberus Guy and slightly to the right there was a third member of this little squad. Well, that took Garrus back. All those firefights with Shepard, three of them ranged slightly apart, counting on one another. He missed that. The team he had assembled had been good, but there hadn’t been time, or perhaps the stakes hadn’t been high enough, to truly build those bonds he had developed on the _Normandy_. He missed Shepard suddenly, fiercely, and wondered why. Because he was so close to death?

Taking another look at the third merc, he realized why—it was the white hard suit. Shepard had always favored white. Dirty, scuffed, cracked, showing every mark of battle. Like she was wearing her war wounds proudly on her chest. This merc’s hard suit was new, still shiny. 

Forgetting where he was, he watched her for a minute. Definitely a woman, a human. Small, like Shepard had been. She even moved like Shepard. Garrus had spent far more time on missions than he should probably admit to watching the way Shepard moved, and he remembered that slow, deliberate step, that rigid set of the shoulders as she aimed her weapon. How many times had he told her not to do that? he thought in annoyance. Then he caught himself. Of course this wasn’t Shepard.

As he watched, the woman in white aimed and picked off a merc in front of her.

Really. Well, that was an interesting development. Garrus looked over at Solus and Cerberus Guy, each of whom were engaged in shooting their fellow mercs in the back. So—an extraction time? He couldn’t see why. No one knew who he was, and Archangel had no affiliations that would be to anyone’s benefit. Some unit determined to take the glory of killing him for themselves rather than leave it for the gangs?

Then the woman in white flipped up her visor for a clearer field of vision, and Garrus nearly dropped his rifle.

He would have known those brown eyes anywhere.

How was it possible that Zia Shepard, who had been spaced in the destruction of the _Normandy_ two years ago, was still alive, was here on Omega with a salarian doctor and a Cerberus guy, and was coming for him? Maybe he was already dead. Yes, that must be it. He was dead and this was the afterlife—shooting mercs and seeing Shepard again. He could imagine worse fates.

But he didn’t feel dead. He felt … more alive than he had been in two years, the blood coursing hotly through his veins, his heart pounding. 

Behind Shepard, the other mercs were beginning to catch on to what she and her team were doing. Garrus shot a batarian, swung the rifle and shot a turian, and then back again to another batarian, before loading another concussive round. Carefully he aimed and slammed the shot into Shepard’s shoulder. She staggered a couple of steps, but otherwise ignored the impact and kept coming on, shooting another merc as she did. So he hit her again, just because he could, chuckling to himself as he watched her speed up slightly. Good. She’d been taking too long as it was. Now that he was sure of her, he wanted her up here where he could get a good look at her, hear that firm voice, and ask her just what the hell she had been playing at to let everyone think she was dead.


	9. Back from the Dead

Shepard and her crew had made it across the bridge. In the rooms below him, Garrus could hear gunfire as they shot it out with the mercs, but he wasn’t worried. It had taken her ship blowing up to take out Shepard before—she could handle a few cut-rate mercenaries. And if she couldn’t, she wasn’t really Shepard, was she?

His heart pounded as he strained to hear her team’s progress. They were on the stairs now. Shepard was light of foot as always, and the salarian moved well, but Cerberus Guy walked like he was the vanguard of a herd of elephants. 

He kept his back to the door. It was foolhardy—after all, no one knew Archangel was Garrus Vakarian, so they could easily be here to kill him. But he didn’t think they were, not after they had shot their way through a pile of mercs, and, more to the point, he couldn’t seem to turn around. He was gripped by a sudden fear that if he did, it wouldn’t be Shepard at all, and the disappointment would be more than he could bear in his current wearied condition. Garrus had already given some thought to the idea that he was hallucinating—and if he was, he wanted to keep doing it as long as possible.

They were in the doorway now. He held his breath, waiting.

“Archangel.”

Spirits. It really was her. Zia Shepard, alive and standing there in his doorway on what would otherwise have been the last day of his life. If miracles existed, this was one.

Forcing himself to start breathing again, Garrus turned around, slowly, not hurrying, and unlatched his helmet. Now that he knew she was real, he was nervous about what her reaction would be to seeing him. Would she be happy? Was she still herself at all, for that matter? Zia Shepard had been spaced—no one came back from being spaced, he reminded himself. But even as he said it, he was looking through the visor of his helmet at her wide brown eyes, at her soft sweet mouth, at the shorn stubble of her hair, and believing it was her, with everything that implied.

He pulled off the helmet. “Shepard.”

Those big brown eyes widened even further. “Garrus?” Then, again, with happiness and a deep relief, “Garrus!” She threw herself at him, her arms going around his waist. Garrus couldn’t stop his arms from circling her in return. She had never hugged him before. But then, she had never come back from the dead before, either. She gave him another squeeze and stepped back, her eyes searching his face. “Garrus! How the hell are you?”

“Better now,” he told her, coughing at the end to cover the huskiness of his voice. “How are _you_? Because I thought you were dead. We all did.”

“I was.” She glanced over her shoulder. “It’s a long story, and probably not one we have time for right now. Probably just like the one about the turian C-Sec officer who ended up on Omega calling himself Archangel.”

“Yeah, that one’s pretty tedious.”

“I bet I won’t agree when he finally tells it to me.”

They looked one another in the eye, each challenging the other to explain themselves, and then chuckled.

“Stubborn as ever, I see,” Shepard said. “What are you doing here? The short version.”

Garrus shrugged. “Just keeping my skills sharp. A little target practice.”

She frowned at him. “You sound tired. You okay?”

“It’s been a long day. But it’s good to see a friendly face.” His hand lifted to touch her cheek. He caught it before she noticed, and then glanced over her shoulder to see if her companions had seen. Mordin Solus was busy inspecting the weaponry Garrus had stockpiled, but Cerberus Guy was paying attention, and he didn’t like it at all. Uneasily, Garrus wondered if there was something between the two of them. It had been two years, after all, plenty of time for a person to move on. He wondered if Kaidan knew she was alive.

Shepard noticed the direction of his gaze and turned to include the others in the conversation. “Garrus, this is Mordin Solus. He’s just agreed to join my mission.”

“I’ve heard of Dr. Solus.” Garrus gave the salarian a friendly nod.

Solus spoke in rapid-fire bursts. “Garrus Vakarian. Archangel. Makes sense. Should have guessed.”

“Right?” Shepard agreed. “I could kick myself. Turian, dislike of authority, striking out on his own … all the signs were there.” She turned to Cerberus Guy. “And this is Jacob Taylor.”

“I’ve heard a lot about you,” Cerberus Guy said.

“Much checkered, I’m sure.”

“You’d be surprised.”

Garrus considered he probably would be. He’d love to know what Shepard had said about him. But no doubt Cerberus Guy, Taylor, had gotten most of it from some official dossier somewhere. “And you’re all here to rescue me out of the goodness of your hearts?”

“I came to recruit Archangel for a job, only to find he’d managed to piss off every major merc organization in the Terminus Systems. When you do something, you sure go all the way.”

“It’s a gift,” Garrus agreed. He shook his head. “I’m still amazed that they teamed up to fight me. They must really hate me.”

A burst of gunfire from the bridge reminded them why they were here. Garrus picked up his weapon from where he had set it down at his side.

“You nailed me pretty good with that thing, by the way,” Shepard told him.

“Concussive rounds,” he said. “No harm done. Couldn’t have the mercs getting suspicious.”

She looked up at him skeptically. “Uh-huh.”

“Now, Shepard, we both know if I’d wanted to do more than take your shields down, I’d have done it. Besides, you were taking your sweet time. I needed to get you moving.”

“So you’ll come on board with me?”

“You get me out of here and we’ll talk.” Of course he would go. Anywhere she wanted. But there was no point capitulating so quickly. “And I don’t think getting out will be as easy as getting in. That bridge has saved my life, funnelling all those witless idiots into scope, but it works both ways. They’ll slaughter us if we try to get out that way.”

“We can’t just sit here and wait for them to come to us,” Taylor pointed out, his tone harsh and aggressive. He hadn’t been with Shepard long, then, Garrus surmised, not if he didn’t trust her to come up with a plan. Briefly he considered that maybe she wasn’t up to coming up with plans … but she sounded like herself, so he had to believe she really was herself.

“We can for a little while yet,” Shepard said. Her eyes were still on the bridge; she hadn’t even seemed to register Taylor’s tone. “We hold this location, take out as many mercs as we can, and wait for a crack in their defenses. Then we take our chances.” She looked up at Garrus, frowning. “I’d love to know how you got yourself into this position.”

He had meant to lie, or at least be flippant, but it was still so damn hard not to tell her the truth. “My feelings got in the way of my better judgment,” he said briefly. “It’s a long story.”

“I look forward to hearing it when we get out of here.”

“Good. Let’s do that, then.” He raised the sniper rifle, sighting through the scope. “Let’s see what they’re up to.”

On the bridge, he could see movement. Scouts. Eclipse, he thought. That was heartening—they had stopped throwing hired thugs at him.

He said as much to Shepard, handing her the rifle. “Here. Take a look.”

She lifted it to her shoulder, looking through. Then she squeezed the trigger easily and one of the oncoming LOKI mechs lost its head. “More than scouts,” she said. “One less now, though.”

“Form’s not bad,” he told her.

“I’m a little rusty.” She smiled up at him. “I could use a good teacher.”

Garrus’s heart thudded in his chest, before he reminded himself that he was a turian and she was a human and she’d never thought of him that way anyway. Fortunately, the mercs were firing now, providing an excellent distraction.

With Mordin, a surprisingly good shot, and Taylor, who fired with carefully trained precision, they managed to take out the first wave.

They had a quick breather there, enough for Garrus to take in the determined set to Shepard’s jaw and her focused expression. How familiar they were, even now. “Just like old times,” he said to her.

From the door into the main building, Taylor called, “I think I hear movement down below.”

“Damn. I thought that was going to take them longer.”

“I’ll go down and check it out.”

“I’ll keep the bridge clear.”

She glanced down at the bridge, where the next wave of mercs was massing, then looked up at him, studying his face. “Let’s split up two and two. I’ll leave one of my team here.”

“I’ll be fine,” Garrus protested, although he didn’t feel fine. He felt exhausted. She must have seen it. She always had been good at gauging her team. “Besides, who knows what you’ll find down there.”

“I can handle it.” She glanced at the salarian. “Mordin, you stay with Garrus. Keep him safe.”

“Will do what I can,” the salarian assured her.

“Thanks, Shepard.” The sounds from below were louder now. “You’d better get going. Do what you do best.”

She smiled. “I’m on it. See you in a few.”

And then she was gone, and Garrus and the salarian were left alone, holding off the next wave of attacks.

It seemed to be going well, with Shepard and Taylor below keeping the rooms clear and Mordin and Garrus up top watching the bridge. They even appeared to be winning. Until Tarak showed up with that damned gunship. Garrus turned, pushing Mordin out of the way, but it wasn’t the salarian they wanted. It had never been the salarian they wanted. The bullets pounded into his suit, knocking him this way and that, the spray heavy enough that he couldn’t stand up under it, or get out of its way. His last thought before darkness claimed him was that he should have asked Shepard what it was like to be dead. Then at least he would have known what was ahead of him.


	10. The Normandy

Garrus came out of the blackness into the vice grip of pain. His face was on fire, his side like a sheet of flame. In the midst of it, her voice, calling his name. Groggily, he thought he had died, and gone to wherever Zia had gone. But then he remembered that she was alive; she had come to Omega looking for him. Or for Archangel, which worked out the same. And he was damned if he was going to die now, without knowing where she had come from and why she was still here.

He woke again in a fuzzy cocoon of warmth, blinking the world’s edges back into sharp focus. He was in a medical unit, that much he could tell, and had been heavily dosed with painkillers. Whatever damage had been done must be extensive, he judged, given the sluggishness of his thoughts and his overall lack of interest in moving. Not much to be done but lie there and wait to find out where he was, so that’s what he did, drifting in and out of consciousness.

Eventually when he came to he found himself staring into a familiar pair of sharp green eyes that were studying him with concern. “Dr. Chakwas?” he said, his voice creaking as he used it. His face hurt when he talked. Maybe he should keep his mouth shut for a while. If he could, anyway. Keeping his mouth shut had never been Garrus’s strong suit.

“The same,” she responded. “Glad to see you’re still with us. It was touch and go there for a while.”

Garrus was less interested in his own prognosis than in the sudden and inexplicable familiarity of his surroundings. He had been in this medbay before. Many times, being patched up after another trip planetside with Shepard. “ _Normandy_?”

“You should stop talking,” Dr. Chakwas admonished him. “You’ll rip out your stitches.”

This time he settled for clearing his throat pointedly, which hurt marginally less. 

She smiled. “Yes, you’re on the _Normandy. Normandy_ SR-2, to be specific. Completely rebuilt with modifications by Cerberus.”

He made a garbled sound that he hoped expressed surprise, concern, and a desire to know more.

“I really think I should wait and let Commander Shepard explain.”

Garrus tried to say “Shepard” without moving his mouth, and was not at all surprised when Dr. Chakwas shot him up with another dose of painkiller. 

“Get some more rest, and we’ll answer your questions when your stitches have healed a bit more.”

That sounded like a good plan to him. He was either dead and the afterlife was the _Normandy_ , which he found he was okay with, or he was alive and so was Shepard, which he was more than okay with.

When he woke up next, Garrus felt much better. Dr. Chakwas seemed to agree—at least, she didn’t argue with him too hard when he insisted on getting up to take a look at the rest of the _Normandy_ , giving him a prognosis report on his recovery while he was getting dressed. A bit woozy from the residue of the painkillers and however long he’d spent on his back in medbay, he paused in the doorway to get his bearings. He could feel the engines under his feet again. Slowly he became aware of two people talking near him. One was Shepard; the other was Cerberus Guy. Garrus searched his memory for the name. Jacob, yes.

Jacob was expressing what sounded like concerns about Garrus’s ability to recover from his wounds. Chakwas hadn’t said anything about that, and usually she wasn’t one to sugarcoat the truth. She had talked about some cybernetic implants and some surgery that would need a few more days to heal so that he would be ready for action again, but otherwise seemed to think he would be good as new before too long. What did Cerberus Guy have against him anyway? Garrus thought with some irritation.

He made his way out of the doorway, finding Jacob and Shepard sitting at one of the long tables in the mess hall. Jacob stopped speaking and looked up at him, startled, and Shepard turned around, her face brightening at the sight of him. “Garrus! You’re up. How are you feeling?”

Garrus shrugged.

“Damn, Garrus, you’re a tough son-of-a-bitch,” Jacob said with what seemed like genuine admiration. “I didn’t think you’d be up yet.”

“Takes a lot to get me down,” Garrus told him. He wasn’t sure he was ready to sit down—or, more to the point, get up again—so he stood next to their table, instead. “Dr. Chakwas wouldn’t give me a mirror. She said I didn’t want to know. Tell me, Shepard—how bad is it?”

She smiled and shrugged. “Hell, Garrus, you were always ugly. Slap some face paint on there and no one will even notice.”

He chuckled at that, and then winced. “Ouch. Don’t make me laugh, damn it. My face is barely holding together as it is.”

“Who says I was joking?” She grinned at him. Shepard had some scars of her own, Garrus noticed. Leftovers from whatever had happened to her? 

“You know, some women find facial scarring attractive,” he pointed out. “Mind you, most of those women are krogan …”

“Yeah? Maybe we’ll set a course for Tuchanka. I hear Wrex has pretty much taken over.”

“That’s what I heard, too. Hard to imagine Wrex in charge.”

“Right?”

The bells whistled the change of the hour, and Jacob got to his feet. “I’ve got a few things left to do in the armory. I’ll see you later, Commander. Garrus, glad to have you with us.” His hand-shake seemed genuine. Garrus wondered if he had just been imagining the earlier hostility, or if that was simply Jacob’s demeanor with strangers.

Either way, he was glad to be left alone with Shepard. “You going to tell me now how you ended up in the middle of my completely handled situation on Omega when I thought you were dead?”

“I saved your ass, Vakarian, and you know it.” Shepard got to her feet. “Come on, I’ll show you the forward battery.”

“How did you know? I’m sure everything needs recalibrated.”

“I’m sure it does,” she agreed. “What did we ever do without you?”

“Well, fortunately, you don’t have to find out.”

Shepard stopped in the galley. “Rupert, someone I want you to meet. Rupert Gardner, this is Garrus Vakarian. Rupert’s our new cook,” she explained. Turning to the balding cook, she said, “You got those dextro supplies I had delivered from Omega?”

“Yep.” He stepped forward to shake Garrus’s hand. “I’m a bit rusty at the dextro stuff, so I’ll take any pointers you have.”

Garrus shook his head. “You don’t want cooking advice from me, trust me. Field rations will do just fine.”

“I think we can manage something better than that,” Rupert said, “but I do have some nutrient paste for a backup, just in case.”

“Works for me. Thanks.”

“Anything for the Commander.”

Garrus smiled as they left the galley. So she had made a conquest of the cook. No surprise there. Shepard took care of her people. That, at least, hadn’t changed. Although the people were Cerberus hires, now, which must make some difference. Once they were alone in the forward battery, the doors sliding closed behind them, he said, “Cerberus, Shepard? Are you sure about this? I still can’t get those experiments they were doing out of my head.”

“Yeah, neither can I. Except that now I’m one of them.” At his quizzical look, Shepard continued, “They found my body somehow after I got spaced, and through whatever miracles of technology they used, they rebuilt me. Completely. I’ve got some cybernetics, but … most of it is me. I don’t know how, Garrus, but they brought me back to life, gave me another chance, and then they brought the _Normandy_ back, too—and all they’re asking me to do is what I would have done anyway: look into the Collectors who are kidnapping human colonists. I have a free hand, apparently unlimited funding …”

“It sounds too good to be true.”

“I know it does,” she agreed. “Which is why I’m glad to have you here. The Illusive Man, who seems to be the head of Cerberus, gave me dossiers on who to recruit, but I don’t think he knew who Archangel was.” She took a step toward him, taking his hand. “If I’m walking into hell, I want someone I trust at my side.”

If she only knew what hell truly had been—those days after she died. He would do anything to avoid that again, even work for Cerberus, as it turned out. Not that he was about to tell her that. Whatever his complicated set of emotions toward her might have been, they still couldn’t go anywhere. No use in burdening her with them. He chuckled, carefully, avoiding moving his face as best as possible. “You realize this plan has me walking into hell, too?” He shook his head, taking his hand gently back from her. “Just like old times.”

“I’d think a man who was willing to take on the Blue Suns, the Blood Pack, and Eclipse all at once would find a hell a charming vacation. What were you doing on Omega, anyway?”

“I got fed up with all the bureaucratic crap on the Citadel, and it didn’t look like it would be much better if I went back to the turian military. So I struck out on my own. And where better to find a good clean-up job than Omega? Hell, all I had to do was point my gun and shoot.”

“Apparently you did it pretty well, since you seemed to have pissed off every major merc organization in the Terminus Systems pretty thoroughly.”

Garrus nodded, wincing as he thought of his team. “Yeah, we did some good work, really made a name for ourselves.”

“Archangel, huh? You going to stick with that one?”

“The locals gave it to me, and I was happy to put my own aside for a while.”

A voice erupted from a speaker behind him, crisp and cool. “News networks on Omega indicate that the gangs believe Archangel to be dead. I would recommend discontinuing use of the moniker.”

Garrus jerked around, startled.

“Garrus, meet EDI,” Shepard said. “She’s our new AI.”

“An AI? On the _Normandy_?”

“Yeah. Joker’s fit to be tied.”

“Joker’s here, too?”

“It’s the _Normandy_. Who else were they going to get to fly her?” 

“Well, when you put it that way.”

“Mr. Moreau and I should eventually come to an amicable working arrangement,” EDI said.

“You have more faith than I do,” Shepard told her.

“Do you wish to discuss the human ability to get used to its surroundings?”

“No, EDI. Thank you.”

“Very well.” The speaker turned itself back off.

“Does that happen often?”

“Anytime she thinks she can add to the conversation. Lack of privacy does come with the Cerberus umbrella. Pretty sure they’re reading my mail, too, which is why I haven’t tried to contact my mother, or anyone else.”

Was it Garrus’s imagination, or did she hesitate before the “anyone else”? So Kaidan didn’t know she was alive? Or was he already here? “Anyone else we know on board?”

“No, just Joker and Dr. Chakwas. There’s a full complement of crew, including a couple of hotshots down in engineering who seem like they could give Tali a run for her money, and then you met Jacob and Mordin, so the only one you don’t know yet is Miranda. She’s the Cerberus operative who was in charge of bringing me back to life. Word of warning: She and Jacob are pretty gung-ho about Cerberus.”

“Noted.” He looked around him at the once-familiar equipment. “Looks like Cerberus has done some upgrading in here. Good. We can use it. I wonder if we can upgrade any further?” He wandered closer, focusing in on some of the details that were just a little bit off.

“Oh, no, you don’t. Once you start in on the calibrations I won’t get a word out of you. Come on, Vakarian, spill. How’d you end up on Omega at the wrong end of a bunch of merc guns?”

“Hm. You know, I thought I’d seen every weapon in the galaxy en route to take down Saren, but mercenary work sure showed me otherwise.” He thought of the others and turned away so Shepard wouldn’t see the pain on his face.

She saw anyway, her voice calling him back. “Tell me what happened.”

“I tried C-Sec, and I went home to Palaven for a while, but I guess I’d gotten used to doing something with my life. So I went to Omega. It was filled with criminals nobody else could touch—and there was no red tape.”

“Perfect for you, in other words.”

“Exactly. And I … built a squad. Like you would have,” he said softly, not wanting her to know what it had meant to him to be building a team in her honor. 

“Doing what? It didn’t sound like you were available for hire.”

“Omega was full of thugs kicking the helpless. I formed my team in order to kick back. We stepped in wherever we were needed. We weren’t mercenaries, not really, since no one was paying us. No shakedowns, no civilian casualties. We were there to make things better.”

“Sounds ideal.”

“Yeah, maybe we were a little idealistic—but every member of my team had lost someone to Omega’s gangs. They had a reason to be there, a reason to be standing and fighting for what was right. And we did good work … for a while.”

“How did you find them?”

He shrugged. “Apparently, once you prove that you can get things done, people join up. Mercs who wanted to atone, security consultants who were tired of playing by the rules, former military operatives, C-Sec agents. Twelve of us altogether. My explosives expert was salarian; pretty sure he’d been part of the Special Tasks Group. And my tech guy was batarian, believe it or not. Not the friendliest type, but he could hack any system ever built. They looked to me for leadership; I gave them hope. And now—“ He couldn’t go on, couldn’t tell her how he had failed them.

“Garrus.” Shepard pushed herself off the table and came toward him. “Tell me what happened. All of it.”

“They’re dead, Shepard. All right? I got them all killed.”

“How?” 

He looked at her, standing there. She was going to have it out of him eventually, he could see that, and part of him wanted to tell her, as much as the rest of him dreaded her knowing. “It was my fault,” he said baldly. “My own damn fault. One—one of my team betrayed me. Betrayed us all. Sidonis; he was a fellow turian. He drew me away just before the mercs attacked the rest of the squad, then he disappeared.” He clenched his fists. “Everyone except me is dead because of him. And because I didn’t see it coming.”

“Are you sure it was a betrayal?”

“I’m sure. He booked transport off of Omega just before the attack, and he cleaned out his bank accounts.”

“I’m sorry, Garrus. I … know how hard it is to lose one person who counted on you. I can’t imagine losing all of them. You—“ She looked up at him, as if considering what to say. “You’re one of the strongest people I’ve ever known to still be standing after that.”

He wasn’t strong; he had been trying to die, hoping the mercs would kill him. Didn’t she know that? Only her presence had kept him alive, that and his determination to make Sidonis pay. “One day I’m going to find him, and … I won’t be leaving him standing.”

“Garrus.” She wanted to protest, he could see that. Shepard had never been one for revenge.

Holding up a hand to keep her from saying anything further, he said, “I think I’m going to get to some of these calibrations, Shepard. I’ll talk to you later.”

Shepard hesitated, but apparently decided it wasn’t worth arguing. “Sure. Enjoy your calibrating.”

She left, and he found a task that needed doing and focused on it, glad to have work to do again, something to keep his mind occupied … and glad to be back aboard the _Normandy_. Nothing had made any sense without Shepard. Maybe now that she was back, he could find his way.


	11. Afraid

“Joker. How are things?” Garrus asked, standing well back from the pilot’s seat. Only Shepard could get away with standing right over his shoulder.

“Can’t complain. Have you seen this chair? Leather! Fits me like a glove.” Joker sighed happily. “This upgrade is almost perfect.” He jerked a thumb in the direction of the glowing blue avatar that represented the ship’s AI, and shook his head.

Garrus shrugged. He’d spoken with EDI once or twice since he’d come on board, and found her robotic but unoffensive. Then again, she wasn’t stationed at his elbow while he was working … and he was considerably less protective of his guns than Joker was of the ship in general. “You’ll get used to it.”

“It’s a hell of a lot better than being stuck in Alliance drydock, that’s for sure.” Joker frowned at something on his screen, sitting forward for a better view, then he punched a button, watched tensely for a moment, and relaxed back into the chair.

“How long have you known about … all this?”

“Not too long. I guess Cerberus recruited me about a year ago? Something like that. They told me they wanted a consultant on a new ship they were building—it was only after Shepard woke up that they told me they were rebuilding _the_ ship.” He smiled. “I guess they figured I’d have busted something from excitement if they’d told me sooner.”

He might have, Garrus thought. “And Shepard? When did you know they were rebuilding her?”

Joker swung his chair around. “I get you. Why didn’t I tell anyone? Like you, and Alenko?”

“Something like that.”

“Because Cerberus would have had my head, that’s why. It’s super hush-hush, naturally, when you bring the Savior of the Citadel back from the dead.”

“’Super hush-hush’ and not telling her best friends are two different things. Does Liara know?”

“Probably, but not from me.”

“So you were a good little soldier.”

Joker rolled his eyes in the direction of EDI’s avatar. “If I had tried, you think the information would have gone through? I don’t.”

“Cerberus had a vested interest in Commander Shepard’s resurrection remaining confidential,” EDI said. “You should understand that, Mr. Moreau.”

“I do. Which is why I never tried to contact anyone. Keep up, EDI,” Joker snapped. He swung his chair back around, the silence heavy in the cockpit.

“I understand,” Garrus said to the back of the chair, taking his leave. Joker had always been temperamental, but the AI was making it worse, definitely.

He went through the CIC, noting that Shepard wasn’t there, pacing in front of the galaxy map. Possibly that had to do with Yeoman Chambers at her usual post, fingers tapping away at her keyboard. Shepard didn’t like having her every move monitored any more than Joker did, and it was clear that Chambers was there as much to keep an eye on all of them for the Illusive Man as she was in any kind of administrative or counseling capacity. Garrus wasn’t sure about this human insistence on working through your feelings, anyway. You took your feelings to the battlefield, and you worked through them with bullets flying into the oncoming enemy. That was the turian way. His one conversation with Chambers had convinced him that her training in the psychology of non-humans had been scanty at best; he didn’t think he would be making use of her services during this trip.

As he went through the weapons locker, Jacob gave him a brief, not particularly friendly, glance and an even briefer nod. Garrus returned the nod with a deliberately courteous one of his own. He wasn’t sure if the human’s hostility was because of Garrus’s species, or because Garrus was Shepard’s friend. Mordin Solus was the only other non-human aboard at the moment, although they were en route to pick up a krogan warlord, but Mordin kept himself to himself, busy in his lab. Garrus was more out and about, trying to figure out what Cerberus’s angle was and if they, and the mission, could be trusted. As for being Shepard’s friend, Garrus couldn’t help that, and he was glad to be aboard for her sake as much as for his own—she needed someone here who was looking out for her well-being. Miranda kept an eye on Shepard, but it was a clinical eye, not one that worried if Shepard was getting enough to eat, or sleeping enough. And Dr. Chakwas had her hands full with the entire ship’s medical concerns; she didn’t have time to watch Shepard specifically.

But Garrus did, and he didn’t like what he saw. Shepard had always pushed herself, but now it was harder, less forgiving. More as though she wanted to punish herself. And it concerned him.

As he had expected, she was in the shooting range. He crossed his arms and watched her, noting with approval that she was still using all the things he had taught her on the original _Normandy_. Proof, if he had needed it, that she was Shepard and not a clone with a rudimentary upload of Shepard’s memories. 

He let her aim and fire a few more shots before leaning forward and keying the intercom. “You’re still dropping that shoulder when you’re tired.”

“I’m not tired.”

“Please. Try that on someone who doesn’t know you. When was the last time you got a full night’s sleep?”

“I was asleep for two years, Garrus! That’s enough to hold me for a long time.”

Seeing that she had put the gun down, he buzzed himself into the range, standing over her. “You know none of that was your fault, don’t you?”

“It wasn’t my choice, either.”

“Which part?”

She frowned up at him. “I didn’t want to die, Garrus. But I also didn’t want to let Joker die. If I had it to do again, I would do it again, just the same.”

“But you wish they hadn’t brought you back?”

“Yes! No. I don’t know.” She sighed. “So many people have already been lost, and we don’t have any idea what’s going on over on the other side of the Omega 4; what if they’re all already dead? What if this is doomed before we start? It just … where is the Alliance in all this? Where’s the Council? Burying their heads in the sand, again, pretending everything’s going to be fine, and here I am over here doing all the work for them. Again. And for what, just so I can die again?”

“So you work your fingers to the bone trying to prove … what, exactly?”

Shepard shook her head, smiling a little. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s less that I’m trying to prove something and more that I just don’t dare stop to think, or maybe I can’t do it at all.”

“I hear Daniels and Donnelly have a weekly Skyllian Five game.”

“I’m just supposed to sit and play cards while people are dying?”

“Shepard.” He hesitated, then used her first name for the first time since they had been reunited. “Zia.” He caught her by the shoulders, holding her still as he looked down into her brown eyes. “People are dying across the galaxy all the time. One by one or collectively, you can’t keep people from dying. You are trying to save those you can save, and that’s laudable, but if you don’t stop to laugh, or rest, or eat, or spend time with friends, then what’s the point? Your exhaustion won’t save anyone, and it won’t atone for the lives you couldn’t save. It will only imperil the ones who are waiting on you, and those who accompany you in the process.”

She wanted to argue, he could see that, but instead she blinked and looked away, sighing. “I know you’re right. I just can’t seem to be able to close my eyes without seeing …”

“People in pain?”

“Nothing,” she corrected. “I see nothing. And I spent two years seeing nothing, thinking nothing, feeling nothing—knowing nothing. I don’t want to go back to that.”

The truth dawned on him suddenly. “Are you afraid if you go to sleep you won’t wake up?”

The pain in her face told him he had it right. “Silly, isn’t it? But … yes.”

“Not silly at all. Look, though—look around you. This ship is recreated down to the last detail. You are recreated down to the last detail … as far as I can tell, at least. Cerberus put a lot of time and money into you. You think they’d do that just to let you go again? Not a chance.”

“I suppose.”

“Hey.” Garrus put a finger under her chin and tipped it up so she was looking into his eyes. “I’m not going to let that happen, all right? I will personally stand over Miranda with a gun to her head until you’re up and about again if anything happens to you. I promise.”

Zia managed a smile. “You know that sounds terribly creepy, right?”

He chuckled, glad to see some humor brightening her eyes again. “Maybe so—but I’d do it anyway.”

“Thank you.”

“Anytime. Now, will you go and get some rest, or at least something to eat?”

“Only if you come with me.”

“Deal.”


	12. The Way It Went Down

Garrus leaned against the wall just inside the door of the cockpit, watching the blur of light as the stars hurtled past the windows. After Horizon, it was good to be on the move, good to know they were doing something against the Collectors. All those humans in stasis; all the pods being taken away by the bug-like creatures, amidst the eeriness of those empty dwellings whose inhabitants had simply been … collected—those were images that would stay with him, he could tell.

Shepard had even more reason to be glad to leave Horizon behind her, and he watched her now as she gripped the back of Joker’s seat, leaning tensely forward as she, too, stared out the windows.

“Shepard. You want to let go of my chair? Hard to steer when the seat is twitching.”

“Sorry.”

There was a silence in the cockpit as Joker adjusted his chair and took a fresh grip on the controls. He leaned back with a sigh. Much as the pilot’s comments about the leather seat were facetious, it seemed clear that Cerberus had designed it with his Vrolik’s Syndrome in mind—he was notably in better health piloting from this seat tban he had been in the original _Normandy_.

“So, Commander,” Joker began. “Pretty crazy the people you run into around the galaxy, huh?”

Garrus winced. To the best of his knowledge, no one had broached the topic of Kaidan with Shepard since they’d returned from Horizon—other than Chambers, and with Chambers Shepard had been bland and dismissive. Someone needed to talk to her, someone she might actually talk to, and he had considered doing it himself, but he didn’t think he was the right person to touch what she must be feeling after Kaidan’s cutting words. Joker might just have the right approach. Garrus thought about leaving the cockpit and letting them talk in private, but thought he might draw more attention to himself by leaving than he would by staying.

“You think it was an Alliance setup that Kaidan—er, Staff Commander Alenko was there?” Joker asked.

“Yeah, I think it was probably a setup. Although whether it was Alliance or someone else …” Shepard let the comment lie, glancing toward EDI’s avatar. The AI stayed silent. “Still, it was good to see Kaidan. We talked. It was nice.”

“Nice?” Joker echoed skeptically.

“Yeah. Things have changed. We … let it go.”

The pain was evident in her voice, as evident as it had been on her face when Kaidan turned his back on her. But neither Garrus nor Joker called her on it. If she wanted to pretend it had been mutual, maybe that was how she needed to approach it.

“Oh, good,” Joker said with relief. Maybe he was actually buying that load of hooey, Garrus thought in surprise. “I was not looking forward to your mood if that went bad, Commander. There’s a reason I don’t date crew.”

Shepard smiled at that, and Garrus was damned glad to see it. “Yeah, Joker? Who do you date?”

He chuckled. “That’s for me to know and … nosy Cerberus to find out,” he finished with a sour glance at EDI.

“We are not interested in your private life, Mr. Moreau,” the AI told him primly.

“Sure you’re not.”

Shepard shook her head. “On that note, I think I’ll go check my gear. I think I saw a crack in one of my gloves after we got back from that last mission.”

She didn’t glance at Garrus as she left the cockpit; her brown eyes were cast down, watching her feet. He knew if she had looked up, he’d have seen the hurt and bewilderment that had been there ever since they left Horizon, and he felt helpless, not knowing how to help her get rid of all that pain.

When she was gone, Joker spoke up. “Garrus.”

“Yeah.” 

“That really the way it went down, all that ‘we let each other go’ crap?”

“Hardly.” He felt the hard edge of anger rise in him again as he thought of it. “Kaidan laid into her about not being in touch, and about Cerberus, and … He did a lot of talking, and as far as I can tell, no listening at all. And it didn’t help that the whole thing felt like someone had put him there especially to draw Shepard—and the Collectors—to the planet.”

“So you’re saying she’s going to feel a whole truckload of guilt on top of everything else?”

“That sounds about right, yeah.” Garrus shook his head. “Like she needed that.”

“Would it help if you knew that Staff Commander Alenko has sent her an email?” EDI asked.

“Only if we knew what was in it.”

“Joker,” Garrus said. He wanted to know, but that was … well, they shouldn’t even know such an email existed, much less what was in it.

“Yeah, I know. Still …”

“Still,” Garrus agreed. He had restrained himself from going after Kaidan on Horizon and slugging him right on that dimpled chin only because he knew it would have hurt Shepard. “He was more interested in lecturing her about Cerberus than he was in being grateful she was alive.”

“That sucks.”

“He stood right there in the midst of the ruin of what had been a thriving colony ten minutes before and accused her of letting Cerberus brainwash her.” Garrus was getting more and more angry as he thought about it. “Or of not thinking straight out of gratitude.”

He was so focused on that anger, Joker’s next question took him by surprise. “So what are you going to do?” 

“What am I going to do?” he repeated, confused.

“Yeah. You’re her best friend. And you want to be more.”

Garrus refused to dignify that with a response.

“Glad you’re not going to bother denying it.”

“The last thing she wants is someone trying to talk her through her feelings.”

“Tell Chambers that.”

“Telling Chambers to back off is a waste of breath. Even Shepard knows that.”

“Fine, then. Let’s give her something to fight.”

Garrus nodded. “That’s the best idea you’ve had since you folded the full house against Wrex’s pair of aces.” He and Joker both grinned at the memory. Wrex had been about to tear Joker’s head off before the pilot let the krogan win.

“It seems relevant to the conversation to tell you that Commander Shepard has just awakened the krogan,” EDI said.

“She what?”

“She didn’t.” Joker groaned. “What am I saying, of course she did.”

EDI remarked, “She seems to be holding her own very well. Yes, he has backed off before she was required to shoot him.”

“Well, we might as well take him out and see how he fights,” Garrus said.

“There is a Blue Suns facility on a nearby planet,” EDI told him. “Would that be a suitable destination? Yes,” she reported after a brief pause. “Commander Shepard approves. She says to suit up, Mr. Vakarian.”

“Garrus, please, EDI. Tell her I’m on my way.” He left the cockpit, glad that Shepard had found a way to deal with her Kaidan-related feelings on her own, since he still didn’t know what to say to her about it.


	13. Some Important Calibrations

The door of the forward battery slid shut behind Shepard, and she crossed the room to stand over Garrus, watching intently as he adjusted the fit of a coupling. He glanced up at her. “Something on your mind, Shepard?”

“I was just going to ask you the same question. Just … wanted to check in with you and see how you’re doing.”

“Oh. Fine, really.” He frowned at the coupling, the wrench suddenly slippery in his fingers. “Um … can this wait for a bit? I was just in the middle of some calibrations.”

There was a pause, and a faint sigh that she clearly tried to stifle, then she said, “Sure. I’ll see you later.”

As she headed for the door, he called over his shoulder, “I’ll be here if you need me.”

Garrus turned his attention back to the coupling. Something seemed off, though, and he lifted his head, looking toward the door, to see that it still stood open, with Shepard stopped in the middle of the doorway. As he looked at her, she turned back in his direction, her face like a thundercloud.

“Shepard?” he asked hesitantly, unsure what he had done to make her angry.

“You’re such a liar, Vakarian.”

“I am?”

“Yes. You say that all the time—‘I’ll be here if you need me’—but when I actually come here looking for you, it’s ‘oh, I’m in the middle of some calibrations, Shepard’; ‘Come back later, Shepard’; ‘Not right now, Shepard’. So which is it? Are you here when I need you, or are you really only here to calibrate the damned guns?”

Garrus was stricken. He hadn’t realized how often he did that, apparently. And how could he tell her that sometimes he pushed her away when he could tell she wanted to talk because he was afraid he didn’t know what to say—and equally afraid of all the things he might say in an unguarded moment?

“Well?” Shepard demanded. “Are you just going to sit there? Surely you have some important calibrations to do.”

He put the wrench down on his worktable. “No, I’m done for now.” 

“Please, don’t let me rush you.”

“Zia. What’s this really about?”

Her lips tightened, and she looked away, studying the doorway intently to avoid meeting his eyes.

“Kaidan?” he hazarded, not that it required much work to guess.

“Damn it,” she hissed under her breath. “I should be past this by now.”

“Should you? It was, what, three days ago? I would have thought even you would cut yourself more slack than that.”

She lifted her hands and rubbed them across her face. “There are so many more important things to consider.”

“Sure,” Garrus agreed. “Plenty of them. But … nothing that cuts as close. It’s—well, it’s similar to losing Ash, isn’t it?”

Zia winced, but she thought about it. “I suppose you can look at it that way. I certainly have lost a crewmate and a friend.”

“He should have given you the benefit of the doubt.” 

She shrugged wearily. “Should he? There I am, with you in tow, alive when he knew I had died. He didn’t know I had tried to get in touch with him and been kept from it by the Alliance.”

“He could have guessed,” Garrus pointed out.

“He probably did when he had time to think about it. But he’d lost friends that day. Surely not everyone on Horizon thought of him the way that guy Delan did; some of them must have liked him, had him over to watch the game. He … mentioned moving on—maybe he had moved on with someone on Horizon who was taken by the Collectors.” 

“Does that bother you?”

“No! Definitely not. I wouldn’t have wanted anyone’s life to be ruined because I—died.”

_If only she knew_ , Garrus thought. Not that he would ever tell her.

“I’m glad he moved on,” Shepard continued earnestly. “But … for all that, not to even let me explain, to cut me off the way he did, to—I have never in my life refused to listen to someone who wanted to explain something to me.”

That was true; she was unbelievably patient and willing to listen at all times. Garrus had often speculated whether that was the secret to her incredible successes. Even Saren had been drawn to talk to her at the end, albeit long after it was too late to matter. “You know that’s not normal, right?”

Shepard sighed. “I suppose not. But … I expected better from Kaidan.”

“I did, too,” he assured her. “I’d have thought he would give you the benefit of the doubt."

“So you said. But clearly he wasn’t willing to have faith in either of us,” she said bitterly. “You know he emailed me?”

Garrus braced himself for whatever insensitive thing his former comrade might have said. “And?”

“And he said he was too afraid to let himself believe—or words to that effect.”

Little as he wanted to defend Kaidan after the scene on Horizon, Garrus felt she wasn’t being entirely fair. None of them had reacted well to her death … and since Kaidan had lost the most, it had hit him hardest. “It was a pretty hard blow for him when you died.”

“Yeah? It was kind of a blow to me, too.”

He winced at her sarcasm. “I know.”

“Do you?” She looked at him, at the scars on the side of his face, and her anger subsided. “I suppose you do.” Some of the tension eased out of her, and she leaned against the doorframe, her face softening. “I’m sorry, Garrus. You didn’t deserve that.”

He shrugged. “I do a lot of calibrating. I can stand to take more breaks—especially if you need something.” He was going toward her now, his legs moving of their own volition. He put his hands on her shoulders. “Zia.”

Her brown eyes looked up at him questioningly.

“I am here for you. You know that, right? Whatever you need, whenever you need it?”

She smiled, forgiving him. “Unless there’s important calibrating to do.”

“Well, these guns aren’t going to calibrate themselves.”

“Give EDI time, she’ll figure out how.”

“Garrus is much more efficient at this task,” EDI’s voice broke in. “I would never dream of challenging his expertise.”

“EDI,” Shepard said sharply. “There’s a time to listen in, and there’s a time not to.”

There was a pause, and then the AI said, “I will give that some thought. Perhaps I can develop an algorithm to tell me which is which.”

“Good luck with that.” Shepard looked up at Garrus, rolling her eyes, and smiled again. “Thanks, Garrus.”

“Anytime. Consider me your punching bag.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “Maybe I will. Think you could take me, Vakarian?”

“Oh, I know better than to get drawn into that conversation,” he said hastily.

“Good. Commander Shepard is mighty and indomitable, remember?”

“Yes, I’m sure I heard that on a news vid somewhere.”

She chuckled, turning to go. Her shoulders were straight and there was a bounce in her step, he noticed. Well, if yelling at him was what it took to brighten her mood, she could do it twice a day, as far as he was concerned, Garrus thought, letting the doors slide closed. And he would have to have a few choice words with his old friend Kaidan before the two of them were in the same room together again.


	14. Enough Time

It came as no surprise to Garrus when Shepard charmed her way across Tuchanka. Charming a krogan wasn’t easily done, and required a certain toughness that many people wouldn’t have thought was in Shepard’s arsenal, small and delicate-looking as she was, easily as she schmoozed asari and salarians and other humans. But she walked among them like she was as big and as long-lived and as indestructible as any of them. The fact that she was clearly in the favor of Wrex, who was now the leader of the most powerful clan on Tuchanka, had helped as well.

Wrex even deigned to accompany them back to the shuttle, along with the newest member of Wrex’s Urdnot clan, the tank-bred krogan Grunt whom Shepard had awakened.

“All right, stripling. Don’t let Shepard get killed, take down your enemies with enthusiasm, and remember you’re a krogan.”

“Yes, Clan leader.” Grunt had turned down the opportunity to stay and be part of the clan in order to remain with Shepard, telling Wrex that as a battlemaster, she had no equal. Wrex hadn’t disagreed. Garrus thought the big scarred krogan was a little jealous that the young one got to fly off into the galaxy and go kill things while he was stuck in the middle of a political nightmare on Tuchanka.

Wrex turned to Garrus, punching him in the arm. “Garrus.”

Garrus returned the gesture. “Wrex.”

“See you around.”

"Not if I see you first."

Wrex grunted in amusement, or possibly agreement, and turned to Shepard. She was looking up at Wrex with affection, almost as if she’d like to hug him. Wrex looked back at her with the same half-longing expression. “Shepard. No more dying, all right?” he said gruffly.

She smiled. “I’ll do my best. You, too.”

“Yeah. I’m too tough to die.”

He watched them as they climbed aboard the shuttle. As it lifted off, Garrus chuckled. “Who would have thought Wrex, of all people, would be the one to bring the krogan together?”

Shepard shrugged. “I’m not surprised. He always had leadership qualities.”

“Did he? You mean when he cheated at Skyllian poker, or when he caused an explosion in the mess hall trying to make a Tuchankan delicacy, or when he almost shot you on Virmire?”

“Well, if you’ll remember, you guys always let him win the poker games, he got one of the ensigns to step in and make his delicacy for him, and in the end, he saw reason on Virmire.”

“That sneaky bastard. He did always win.”

Grunt and Shepard both laughed.

When the shuttle landed, Grunt returned to his quarters on the engineering deck, but Garrus took the elevator with Shepard up to the CIC. Chambers, perky as always, greeted Shepard with the rundown of news and onboard reports from her time planetside, and added, “And you have new mail on your private server, Commander.”

“Thank you, Chambers.” Shepard spoke evenly, but Garrus could hear the way her teeth clenched. He couldn’t blame her—if Chambers was so openly monitoring his email, he would have decked her. But Shepard figured Chambers was the price she paid to Cerberus for an otherwise free hand, so she had to put up with it. Shepard gestured to Garrus to precede her onto the elevator, punching the button to go up to her private quarters. When the doors closed behind them, she leaned back against the wall. “Some day, I am going to throw that woman out the airlock.”

“Don’t let EDI hear you say that,” Garrus teased.

“Commander, is this one of those conversations that it is not time to listen in on?” the AI inquired.

“Yes, EDI. It really is. And no, I’m not actually going to throw Chambers out the airlock.”

“Thank you for the confirmation.” EDI clicked off, and Garrus and Shepard looked at each other and laughed.

He followed her off the elevator, glad to see her relaxing and loosening up. Horizon, and after that the derelict Collector ship the Illusive Man had lured them onto, had taken their toll on Shepard, but Tuchanka, and Wrex, had been good for her. Garrus paused as Shepard keyed her code in to the door of her quarters. “Shepard. Did you need me for something?”

“What? Oh. No, I just wanted someone to roll my eyes at over Chambers." She hesitated, then added, "Since you’re up here, why don’t you come in for a while, though? It was nice to see Wrex again—made me think I don’t spend enough time with the people around me.”

“Sure.” He wasn’t really so sure. Being alone with her in her quarters seemed surprisingly intimate, and he didn’t want any rumors to begin about the two of them that might be embarrassing for her and uncomfortable for him … but they were different species, after all, he reminded himself. Regardless of the feelings for her that he couldn’t seem to squash, they probably weren’t compatible.

“Let me just check this email, if you don’t mind.”

“Go ahead.” He wandered over to the fish tank, watching the creatures swim. “Why do you have fish?”

“I have no idea. Cerberus put the tank in here, not sure why, and then I got so tired of looking at it empty I bought the fish. Mostly they’re annoying—I keep forgetting to feed them and then having to clean out the dead ones and buy more.” She chuckled. “It’s probably some high level psychological test the Illusive Man is running on me.”

“I wouldn’t put it past him.” Garrus watched one dart behind a plant of some kind. 

Behind him, he heard Shepard gasp.

“Everything all right?”

“My mother. Anderson must have put her in touch with me. She’s mad at me for not contacting her myself, but figures it’s a Spectre op.” She glanced over at Garrus. “Have you heard from your father?”

“You mean, since I abandoned everything a well-brought-up turian should be to become a merc on Omega, or since I got myself mixed up with that human Spectre and her ‘shipful of miscreants’?”

“So you have.”

Garrus nodded. “Regularly. He doesn’t want me to forget what I owe my people.”

“What about what you owe the galaxy?”

“Palaven is the galaxy, didn’t you know?” He shook his head. “Never mind. This is where I want to be. It doesn’t matter what he says.”

Her brown eyes warmed. “For the record, this is where I want you to be, too.”

Garrus’s heart thudded against his ribcage. For the moment he forgot about the differences in their species and the probable mismatch of their anatomy and let himself wonder if just maybe— _Stop that, Vakarian. Be her friend. That’s what she needs._ He forced a smile to his eyes. “Good. Glad to hear it. Now, didn’t you say you wanted me to teach you Skyllian poker?”

She grinned. “Who says I don’t already know? Wrex taught me.”

“Great. There goes the furniture.”


	15. An Eye for an Eye

Garrus stared at the screen in front of him, feeling his heart pound heavily in his chest. After all this time, was this it? Had he found his way to Sidonis? 

Fade. He had heard of the man through his contacts on the Citadel—surely Shepard could help find him. She had to. She of all people would understand how badly he needed this, how desperately he needed to take revenge on the man who had betrayed him, cost the lives of the rest of the team.

Snapping shut his private terminal, he stormed out of the gunnery bay in search of Shepard, finding her just coming out of life support. She had been visiting Thane, a fact that gave Garrus only momentary pause. The drell was certainly attractive to women, but he’d shown no interest in Zia thus far, not that way. And after all, Garrus wanted Zia to be happy. At least, that's what he told himself.

The momentary distraction was quickly swallowed up in the more pressing issue. “Shepard. I’m glad I caught you.”

“It’s a small ship, Garrus. I’m not that hard to find.”

“You’d be surprised.”

She smiled. “Maybe I would. What’s on your mind?”

He glanced around quickly, ushering her into the elevator for greater privacy. As the doors closed, he said, “You remember I told you about Sidonis?”

“Yes.”

“I’ve got something. I found a lead on him. I—“ He hesitated, knowing she would never approve of what he really wanted, which was to gun Sidonis down in cold blood. “I may need your help.”

“You did? Where is he?”

“On the Citadel.”

Shepard frowned. “That’s where someone who knows you’re hunting him went to ground? On the Citadel? I don’t think much of his brains.”

Garrus nodded to accept the implied compliment. “He’s not planning to stay. There’s a specialist on the Citadel, goes by the name of Fade, who is an expert at helping people disappear. Sidonis was last seen with him. I’m sure he’s just waiting for Fade to get him the right paperwork and then he’ll be gone for good.” His fist clenched of its own volition. “I can’t let that happen.”

The elevator stopped at the CIC, but Shepard reached out and impatiently punched another button, sending it up to the top, to her own quarters. She ushered Garrus inside and turned to face him. “Please, tell me what happened. All of it. I know it’s painful, but if I’m going to help you, I need to know.”

He looked away, at the fish swimming about in the tank. “He tipped off the mercs. He told them where our base was. I—should have seen it coming.”

“You can’t always know what people are thinking.”

“I should have sensed it,” Garrus contradicted her. “He drew me away, you see, just me, on a false job. I should've been suspicious that it only required the two of us. And while he had me away from the base, the mercs hit the rest of the team.” He could see them in his mind’s eye, the carnage he had found when he went back to the base, Sidonis’s pretense of anger and outrage. Garrus barely restrained himself from punching the glass wall of the aquarium. “My men,” he said, his voice only a whisper past the painful lump in the back of his throat, “they weren’t prepared. Not at all. They tried to hold the mercs off, but—“

Two small, soft hands closed on his arms from behind. “Garrus, I’m sorry.”

He shook her off; he didn’t deserve her compassion, couldn’t accept it. “By the time I got back, there were only two survivors, and they—they didn’t last long. All ten of them, my whole squad, dead. Because of him.”

“When you find Sidonis, what are you planning to do?” She had retreated to the other side of the room, standing near her desk. Her tone said she already knew. She could hear it in his voice, he imagined.

“You humans have a saying: ‘an eye for an eye’. A life for a life. Or in his case, for ten lives. It’s not enough, but it will have to do.”

“Garrus.”

“Shepard. He owes me ten lives, and I plan to collect.”

“Are you absolutely sure that’s how you want to play it?”

He whirled around and glared at her. “I’m sure. I’ve thought about this over and over. He needs to die for what he did.” With an effort, he forced himself to calm down. “Look, Shepard, I don’t need you to agree with me; I just need you to help me track him down. Please.”

“If I agree to do this, you have to do something for me.”

Garrus hesitated. Knowing her, it could be anything. But he trusted her, and he knew she would stick to her word and only help if he agreed. “All right.”

“Come here and read this email.”

That, he hadn’t expected. He joined her in front of her terminal, bending over to read the email she had open on the screen. It was from Nalah Butler, whose husband had been part of Garrus’s squad. Raymond Butler had been a full-on nerd when Garrus met him, more comfortable with a keyboard than a gun, and by the end—well, there were few people Garrus would rather have had at his back. He’d had a drive to help people and a determination to learn how to do it. And Nalah—they had been so in love. That this woman who had lost her husband to Garrus’s carelessness was now emailing Shepard to ask Shepard to take care of Garrus …

He blinked hot tears away. 

“He was proud to work with you, Garrus. He died with honor. His wife wouldn’t want you to take out his killer this way—not in cold blood, without … without any of the justice her husband died for,” Shepard said softly.

The ache was back in his throat as he straightened up, staring at the model of the Citadel hanging over Shepard’s desk. He hardly recognized his own voice when it came out, so hard and yet so full of pain. “Will you help me or not?”

Shepard sighed. After a moment, she said, “Where do we find him?”

“I can arrange a meeting when I know when we’ll be going to the Citadel.”

“All right.” Her head was down, studying her screen, a clear signal that she was done talking to him.

Garrus turned to go, not wanting to push her any further, but he stopped in the doorway. “Zia. Thank you for agreeing to help me.”

“You know I’ll do whatever I can for you, Garrus.” The end of her sentence, the part that started with “but” and ended with her asking him to reconsider, hung almost palpably in the air, but she didn’t say it.


	16. Fade

On the Citadel, the usually useful Captain Bailey was able to tell them very little about Fade, except that he was affiliated with the Blue Suns. Shepard appeared to think that should give Garrus pause, but he didn’t care. If he had to take out every single Blue Suns member on the Citadel, that was what he would do.

“Where is he?” Garrus demanded, leaning over Bailey’s desk.

To his credit, Bailey neither flinched nor got defensive. “If I knew that, he’d be in a cell.”

Garrus growled in frustration, turning away.

“Can you point us in the direction of any of Fade’s associates?” Shepard asked.

“There’s a warehouse in the marketplace—we think Fade has contacts there. He’s been elusive so far.” A frown crossed Bailey's face. “It’s possible he has someone inside C-Sec feeding him information. I don’t mind telling you that any dents you can make in his system would be very much appreciated.”

Shepard appeared moved by that, and Garrus should have been, but all he could think of was Sidonis, and putting a bullet in that bastard’s eye once and for all. He paced back and forth while Shepard finished up her conversation with Bailey, and hurried on ahead to the warehouse—a known gang spot even when he worked here—so fast she could barely keep up.

He was startled to find a volus claiming to be Fade. Not that the volus weren’t occasionally shady, but they were also rarely masters of subtlety. They hid in plain sight, protected by legal loopholes and bank accounts, more often than not. The volus was backed by two intimidating-seeming krogan, but they both backed down after one of Shepard’s trademark looks, neither of them wanting to go up against her in the middle of the Citadel.

The volus looked after them worriedly, then back at Shepard. “So, which one of you wants to disappear?”

“We’d rather see you make someone reappear,” Garrus told him.

“That’s … not really the service we provide.”

“Make an exception.” Rapidly losing what little patience he had started with, Garrus drew his weapon and pointed it at the volus. 

“Damn it.”

“Look, you give us some information about a client of yours, and we disappear like we’ve never been here,” Shepard suggested. “Or, you could not give us any information.” She gestured toward Garrus’s drawn weapon.

The volus sighed. “Not my client. I’m not Fade. I just work for him.”

“I knew it,” Garrus snapped. His finger tightened ever so slightly on the trigger. “So tell us where to find Fade.”

The volus weren’t known for their willingness to brave potential bodily harm for their partners, and this one was no exception. “The old prefab foundry in the factory district.”

“Yeah, I’ve been there.”

“He’s got a lot of mercs there. Blue Suns,” the volus offered, trying to be helpful. “Harkin thinks they’re protecting him.”

“Harkin?” Garrus echoed, remembering the drunken sot from his old C-Sec days. “Harkin is Fade?”

“He got fired from C-Sec; now he’s making money exploiting the system.”

“Yeah, that sounds like Harkin.” Garrus put his gun away and the volus scurried off. Turning to Shepard, Garrus said, “Harkin and Sidonis in the same day. Lucky me.”

“Lucky you,” Shepard echoed, following him to the nearest cab stand, but she didn’t seem to believe it.

Harkin was in the warehouse, all right, but he fled as soon as he recognized Garrus and Shepard, leaving a warehouse full of mercs and mechs for them to deal with. Shepard was cool and collected at his side, but Garrus felt the bloodlust of battle rising in him, and he made short work of everyone who got in his way. 

They closed in rapidly—more rapidly than Harkin had expected, it seemed, because he hadn’t planned a back exit from the foundry. He was holed up in the control room at the back. 

Crouching down behind some crates, Garrus said, “Harkin’s never given a straight answer to a question in his life … but he will today.”

“He will?”

“Yes. Because if he doesn’t, I’ll beat him within an inch of his life.”

“Garrus.”

“Shepard, Harkin may know why Sidonis wanted to disappear. If so, he knows what we’ve come for. If we don’t get up there, he might tip Sidonis off. And if Sidonis runs again, who knows how long it will be before I track him down again? I can’t risk it.” He racked another heat sink into his gun. “Besides, he’s working for the Blue Suns now. I could just shoot him on sight.”

“Garrus!”

“Don’t worry, I won’t do any permanent damage. I need him alive, after all.”

Shepard was looking at him with mingled worry and disappointment. “You don’t need him hurt to get what you want.”

Garrus waved her concerns away. “He’s a coward, anyway. Just the threat will probably be enough.”

“I hope so.” She hesitated, then asked, “Are you still planning to kill Sidonis when you find him?”

“That’s the plan.” He had intended to stop with that, but his mouth just kept going. “Unlike everyone he betrayed, his death will be quick and painless. It’s more than he deserves, but as long as he’s dead, I’ll be satisfied.”

“Will you?” Shepard’s hand was on his arm, and she was looking up into his face earnestly. “Will killing Sidonis really make things right for you?”

Somewhere within Garrus was an uneasy suspicion that she might have a point, but he forced the thought away. “As close as they’ll get. Come on.” He navigated around the corner of the crate and continued his progress across the facility in the direction of Harkin’s refuge.

At last they made it to the office, and Garrus took pleasure in kicking down the door and bursting in on Harkin with his gun drawn. True to form, Harkin tried to run, but Garrus caught him with an arm across his throat. “So, Fade … couldn’t make yourself disappear, huh?”

“Garrus!” Harkin said weakly. “Fancy meeting you back on the Citadel. What can I do for you?”

Pressing harder, Garrus barked, “Sidonis. Turian. Came from—“

“Yeah, I know who he is. Look, I don’t give out client information. It’s bad for business.”

“You think you’re still in business?” Shepard asked.

Harkin looked from Garrus, who still had his arm across Harkin’s windpipe, to Shepard, whose hand was on her gun, and sighed. “Fine.”

Garrus was almost disappointed at how easily the man had folded. He wanted to beat him, kick him, put his foot on Harkin’s throat. 

“I’ll set up a meeting.”

“You do that.” With an effort, Garrus took his arm off the man’s throat and stepped back, watching as Harkin crossed to a terminal and spoke to someone, setting up the meeting as he had promised. As the conversation went on, Garrus pulled his pistol, looking at it speculatively. The Citadel would never miss this little weasel. It would be so easy. 

Shutting off the terminal, Harkin gave them the meeting coordinates. “So, if our business is done …”

“Not a chance, Harkin,” Shepard said, but before she could take a step toward him, Garrus had the gun ready, finger on the trigger.

“You’re a criminal now,” Garrus pointed out. “I am entirely within my rights to—“

“You’re just going to kill me? That’s not your style, Garrus.”

Shepard’s disapproval and worry next to him were almost palpable. It wasn’t worth it—Harkin wasn’t worth it. Garrus shook his head. “Not kill you … but slow you down a little.”

Before he could shoot, Shepard pushed his arm out of the way. “You don’t need to shoot him. C-Sec’s on their way. They’ll take care of him.”

“Yeah. They’ll take care of me,” Harkin agreed hastily.

“Trust me, they have their orders. Straight from a Council Spectre,” Shepard told him. “You’re not getting out so easily this time, Fade.”

“Thanks. I think.” Harkin shook his head even as C-Sec officers entered the office to take him into custody. Garrus paid no attention to them—he had a meeting to get to, one he’d been waiting a long time for.


	17. For Them

The drive to the meeting site was tense. Shepard wasn’t talking, and Garrus was so angry—with Harkin, with Sidonis, with himself, with her—that he didn’t know where to start.

“I’m glad you didn’t kill Harkin,” Shepard said at last.

“Are you? Why? Because he’s such a benefit to society?” he asked acidly.

Shepard looked at him, her big brown eyes wide and worried.

“Don’t look at me like that. I’m fine.”

She didn’t look away.

“What do you want from me, Shepard?” Garrus demanded. “What would you do if someone betrayed you? Someone you trusted? And the people who got hurt were people you had promised to protect? What would you do?”

Her mouth tightened as if in pain as she considered the question. “I’m not sure,” she admitted at last. “But I wouldn’t let it change me.”

“Wouldn’t you? How noble. Spoken by someone who’s never had it happen to them.”

Shepard winced, the tone and the words striking her as he had intended them to. “It’s not too late, Garrus. You don’t have to do this.”

“Yes, I do. Who’s going to bring Sidonis to justice if I don’t? Nobody else knows or cares what he did.” He couldn’t help seeing it all over again in his mind’s eye. The bodies, the blood … all of it. “He screwed us—he deserves to die,” he said viciously.

“I understand. I really do. But taking justice into your own hands—that never goes well.”

“Look, Shepard, I appreciate your concern, but I’m not you.”

“You’re not yourself, either.”

“Really? I think I’m completely myself. I’ve always hated injustice. The thought that Sidonis could get away with this … Why should he go on living after he caused ten good people to lose their lives?” He piloted the car into the docking station, and turned to look at her. “Look, I need to set up. Are you going to help me, or not?”

There was no hesitation in her, and he appreciated that. “I’m going to help you.”

“Good. Keep him talking, but don’t get in my way. I’ll let you know when he’s in my sights.”

Garrus found his position. He’d carefully set the meeting place, knowing he’d have a good view from the catwalk, and a quick exit once Sidonis was down. He assembled the rifle, sighting down it, then hit his comm link. “Shepard, I’m set. Can you hear me?”

“Loud and clear.”

Through the scope, Garrus studied everyone he could see. What would Sidonis look like? Would he be fat and prosperous? Sleek and pompous? Self-satisfied and grandiose?

He wasn’t prepared for what he saw, the furtive, frightened man darting out of the shadows to look around before ducking back in. Garrus took his eye off the scope as though Sidonis had struck him. Was Sidonis that scared of Garrus? He looked … destroyed. _Good_ , Garrus thought. But somewhere inside him, it didn’t feel good.

“Straighten up, Vakarian,” he whispered to himself. He had come to do a job, to set those souls at rest, not to mention his own. He was going to do it now. Damn Shepard and her morals, anyway, he thought in irritation. She was the only reason he was hesitating.

“He’s over there by that marquee, hiding in the shadows,” he snapped at her. “Get him out in the light and keep him talking.”

He watched them interact, Sidonis reluctant to come out into the light and Shepard using all her considerable skills at persuasion to get him to come toward her. Even at that, it would be a difficult shot—Sidonis had stepped only far enough out to satisfy Shepard, and no further. Anyone less skilled than Garrus Vakarian might have trouble taking that shot, Garrus thought with satisfaction.

But Shepard was in his way. Garrus hadn’t counted on her lack of height being an issue—he’d thought it would make things easier, actually. But Sidonis had to bend down so far to hear Shepard, who was apparently speaking in an uncharacteristically soft voice, that he no longer presented enough of a target for Garrus to be sure he’d hit Sidonis and not Shepard.

“You’re in my shot,” he growled at her over the comm. “Move.”

They kept talking, Sidonis still bent over.

“Damn it, Shepard! Get him to move so I can take the shot!”

Sidonis started to walk away from Shepard, but she grabbed him and held him there, standing deliberately in Garrus’s way. Garrus growled in frustration. He got the point she was trying to make, but he had told her as clearly as he could that he wasn’t her, and he had to do this his way.

Shepard hit her comm link, and he could hear Sidonis whining that he hadn’t had a choice.

“Everyone has a choice,” Garrus said to Shepard. Apparently except himself, right now, since Shepard was in the way of his choice.

Sidonis was still whining. “They got to me! Said they’d kill me! What was I supposed to do?”

“He’s a damn coward, Shepard, are you satisfied? Let me take the shot!”

“You were just trying to save yourself?” she snapped at Sidonis. “That’s it?”

“Look, I know what I did. I know they died because of me, and I have to live with that.” This was the Sidonis Garrus had once thought he’d known—the thoughtful man who cared about the welfare of those around him. “I wake up every night,” Sidonis continued, “sick, sweating, miserable. Each of their faces staring at me—accusing me. And I’m guilty, so I can’t even argue with them or hope for mercy.” He shook his head. “I’m already a dead man. I don’t sleep, food has no taste. Some days I just want it to be over.”

Garrus saw the scope tremble, and he tightened his grip on the gun, knowing it was his hands that were shaking. He dreamed of them, too. It had been his fault, too, for trusting too much, for not taking enough precautions, for not training them to expect an ambush. He realized he could see now, that Sidonis’s face was fully framed in the scope. He could have taken the shot at any point in the past minute … but he hadn’t.

Shepard’s voice came softly over the comm. “He’s already paying for his crime. Don’t add yours to it. Let it go, Garrus.”

“He still has his life.” Garrus heard his own voice break. “He hasn’t paid enough.”

“Does he? Really? Look at him. Is there anything left to kill? Guilt is taking its own vengeance. So ask yourself—if you kill him now, is it for them … or for yourself?” She walked away, leaving him a clear shot. Sidonis wasn’t moving, just standing there, looking broken and defeated. Waiting for Garrus to end his misery.

“They deserved better,” he said fiercely to Shepard.

“So do better. For them. Be what they believed you were. What I believe you are. Please, Garrus.”

Garrus wiped a hand across his face, putting the gun down. “You win, Shepard. Tell him … tell him to go. Tell him to make sure he and I are never in the same part of the galaxy again.”

She returned to Sidonis, leaving her comm on so Garrus could hear her. “He’s giving you a second chance, Sidonis. So don’t waste it. And … stay out of his way.”

“Gladly. Tell Garrus … tell Garrus I’ll try to … make it up to him, to them. Somehow.”

And he was gone, and Garrus’s revenge was gone with him.


	18. No Peace

Before Zia could try to find him, Garrus disassembled the sniper rifle, packed it up in its case, and took off through the Citadel’s warren of catwalks, a network he knew well and Shepard knew not at all. He couldn’t understand himself. He had wanted to take the shot. He had spent months imagining what it would be like to have Sidonis in his sights, had pictured exactly where the bullet would enter Sidonis’s brain, and when the moment had come, his finger hadn’t moved on the trigger.

His comm link crackled, Shepard trying to reach him, but he ignored it.

Had it been how pathetic Sidonis looked, how hunted? It was clear that what he had done, and his fear of Garrus’s retribution, haunted Sidonis as thoroughly as Garrus would have wanted him to be haunted. But was it enough? Slowly the faces of the others flashed through Garrus’s memory, picture after picture. He had been their leader; they had trusted him. And he had failed them, fallen for a thin story and left them like pyjaks in a trap. Maybe he was the one someone should shoot in the head. Wasn’t he equally as guilty as Sidonis of what had happened? It had been Sidonis’s betrayal, yes, but it had also been Garrus’s stupidity, and he had no choice but to live with that.

Maybe that was why he hadn’t done it, because he knew so thoroughly the hell Sidonis must be living in, because he lived in it himself.

The comm link crackled again, and he clicked it impatiently. “Not now, Shepard.”

“Garrus—“

“Look, I know you want to talk about this, but I don’t. Not yet.” Humans and their infernal talking, he thought. Always with the talking. “I had him, Shepard!”

“I know you did. And you didn’t take the shot.”

“Because of you!”

There was a pause, and then she said softly, “You chose not to. I know that’s not what you had intended … but I think it’s for the best.”

“Best? They’re all still dead,” he said bitterly.

“Killing Sidonis wouldn’t have brought them back to life.”

“I know that! I—“ Too late, he realized that she had drawn him into exactly the talk he’d said he didn’t want to have, and clicked off the comm with a growl of annoyance. Were all humans that insidious? If so, no wonder so many people tried to kill them.

She wasn’t wrong, of course. Killing Sidonis wouldn’t have brought his team back from the dead. But then, Garrus had never expected it to. He had expected it to bring him closure, some kind of peace of mind, some kind of acceptance of Sidonis’s role in the killings and thus his own, and now all of that was out of his reach again.

Or had it always been? Where had his assurance that it would all come right if only he could kill Sidonis come from? He had wanted vengeance, to repay in kind the pain he felt—but Sidonis felt that pain, as deeply as he did. It had been plain in every line of his body. If that was all Garrus had been out for, he had it, and there was no peace in it. Maybe there never would have been.

He let himself down off a catwalk in the midst of the Zakera Ward market and found himself face to face with Zia Shepard. She was leaning against a wall with her arms folded, her eyes steady on his face.

“What, this is your new parlor trick, appearing out of the blue to mess with my life?” he snapped.

“Last time I appeared out of the blue I saved your sorry ass,” she reminded him, her voice steady and even. “And you can disagree all you like, but I think I just did it again.”

“It was my decision!”

“Yeah, it was. But you were making it for the wrong reasons.”

“I never asked you to step in and redirect me!”

She raised her eyebrows. “You know how I feel about killing people just because they’re there and you can, and you still asked me to come along with you. Thane would have come, or Zaeed, or Kasumi, and none of them would have thought twice about helping you put a bullet in that man’s brain. But you didn’t ask them; you asked me.”

Garrus had no response to that, so he turned his back on her and started up the stairs. She caught him halfway up, grabbing his arm and pulling him to a stop.

“Talk to me, Garrus.”

“Why? You think you already have all the answers.”

That shot, or the tone in which it was delivered, hit home, and she winced at it. Garrus took the opportunity to pull his arm out of her grasp and continue up the stairs. She came with him, but didn’t try to stop him or speak again as they walked through Zakera Ward, Garrus taking deliberately elongated strides so she’d have to hurry to keep up.

At last, he stopped and turned to her. “What do you want from me, Shepard?”

“Talk to me, Garrus,” she said again, patiently.

“And tell you what? That I’m a coward, that I couldn’t go through with it, that I’m not sure it would have helped?”

“Yes.”

“Fine. I’m a coward, I couldn’t go through with it, and I’m not sure it would have helped.” He sighed. “I haven’t changed my mind—my team deserves to be avenged. But when I had Sidonis in my sights … I just couldn’t do it.”

Shepard nodded. “The lines between good and evil blur when we’re looking at people we know. He was one of your team, too, and he has suffered as you have. Maybe more, since he was responsible.”

“Maybe.”

“You gave him a chance to atone, a push to make something better of himself, and the permission to stop living in fear. Maybe that’ll make a difference, give him a reason to do something more with his life.”

“I … would like to think that,” Garrus admitted. He shook his head. “It’s so much easier to see the world in black and white. Gray … I don’t know what to do with gray.” He looked down into Zia’s brown eyes. “I just want to know that I did the right thing. Not just for me, but for my team.”

“You’re the only one who can tell yourself if that’s true.”

“What would you have done?”

“I don’t know, Garrus. I hope I never have to find out. I guess … you have to go with your instincts.”

“My instincts are what got me into this mess.”

“No, they’re what kept you from pulling the trigger.”

“I suppose you’re right. Thanks, Shepard, for everything. I appreciate you being here.”

She looked troubled, her eyes searching his face. “Garrus, don’t you know that I—“ She cut herself off. “Never mind.”

“Is there something you wanted to say?” He hoped she wasn’t upset with him; he was upset enough with himself, with Sidonis, and with the situation in general that he wasn’t sure he could handle her disappointment on top of all of it.

“No, nothing. I’m glad I could be here for you. If it helps any, I think you did the right thing.”

“I’m sure it will help eventually. I just have to get it straight in my head.”


	19. Something Else Altogether

Back aboard the _Normandy_ , hurtling through space on the way to the next assignment, Garrus kept his distance from Shepard, brushing off her attempts to talk by retreating into his calibrations. While he understood why she had stopped him from shooting Sidonis, and he could see why this might be the better way, he couldn’t help a certain amount of resentment that she had stepped in and all but made the decision for him. He hadn’t asked her for that; he had asked for her help. That her definition of ‘help’ was different than what he had thought he asked for wasn’t her fault, and he should have seen it coming, but he hadn’t, and he had been taken by surprise when she turned the situation into something that tapped into his own feelings of responsibility for what had happened to his team rather than simply allowing him to lay it all at Sidonis’s feet and exorcise whatever guilt he might feel personally by putting a bullet in Sidonis’s brain.

Still … it was hard not to remember how haggard and haunted Sidonis had looked. There had been something familiar in his eyes, something Garrus saw every time he looked in the mirror. The memory of their team still bound them together, and no doubt always would. For the sake of those who had trusted them both, Garrus might as well have shot himself and Sidonis at the same time. But he didn’t want to die, not anymore, and now that the moment, and the fever for vengeance, had passed, he was no longer sure he wanted Sidonis to die, either. 

After all, no one had ever threatened Garrus’s life if he didn’t betray his people. And while he was certain that, given the choice, he would die rather than betray Shepard or Tali or Wrex or Joker, was he as certain he would take a bullet for Miranda? Or Jacob? Or Zaeed? His team on Omega had been fairly new still, and Sidonis the most recent recruit. Could Garrus really fault him for not putting the others above his own life? 

He hadn’t thought of killing Sidonis as any different than what they did all the time, going into a firefight, shooting down those who opposed them, but it was. Sidonis hadn’t had the chance to fight back; he hadn’t even known Garrus was there. Hardly a fair fight. And Shepard had known it. In combat, no one’s hand was steadier, no one’s shot came with more alacrity, than hers—but cold-blooded murder was something else altogether, and Garrus eventually had to admit she had been right to do what she could to stop him from it. Sidonis’s death wouldn’t have brought the others back, it wouldn’t have eased the pain of having lost them, and it wouldn’t have let Garrus off the hook for his own responsibility. He had been looking for a cheap way out of his guilt, hoping to find it in Sidonis’s blood, but it wouldn’t have been there—and his burden would have been that much greater.

Tightening a bolt an infinitesimal click further, Garrus got to his feet and put the wrench down on his work table. The calibrations had helped, aligning his mind and coordinating his thoughts even as he adjusted the guns that little bit that would mean extra precious seconds in a fight. They would need that when they went against the Collectors.

But he was done for the moment, the guns as close to perfect as he could get them today. Tomorrow, on a fresh night’s sleep, and with his thoughts straight in his head, might be different. But for tonight, he needed to clear the air with Shepard, to apologize for what an ass he had been. 

Eventually he found her in her quarters—the last place he had looked, honestly, since she was so rarely in them. He was reluctant to disturb her in case she was asleep. She didn’t get nearly enough down time for him to intrude on her brief moments. He told himself he would knock lightly, once, and if she didn’t answer he wouldn’t bother her further.

But she called out “Come in!” as soon as his knuckles had tapped the door.

Her face lit with a smile when she saw him. “Garrus! I didn’t expect you.” The smile fading, she searched his face anxiously. “Everything all right?”

“Yes. Fine. I’m … sorry I’ve been abrupt these past few days.”

“You had a lot to think about. Did the calibrations help?”

“They always do.”

“Good.”

“And … I wanted to thank you. If you hadn’t been there—“

“I was there. I—I always will be.” She got up, putting the datapad in her lap down on her desk. 

“And I’ll always be here where you need me,” he promised. “Whatever happens with the Collectors or the Reapers or whoever else comes after us, I’ll be here to help you get the job done.”

“Good. Garrus?”

“Shepard?”

She opened her mouth as if to speak, closed it, cleared her throat, and said, with a little smile, “You actually think we’ll find something worse than Collectors or Reapers?”

He chuckled. “I like to expect the worst. That way, there’s a small chance I’ll be pleasantly surprised.”

“Well, whatever we come up against, I … couldn’t do it without you.” Her eyes were on him, dark and intense, and he wondered if there was something bothering her that she wasn’t saying.

To make her laugh, he said, “Sure you could. Just not as stylishly.”

She did laugh, but it was an odd laugh, hesitant, and she seemed to have more to say. But then the datapad on her desk beeped, and she gave him an apologetic shrug. “Duty calls, I’m afraid.”

“If you need me, I’ll be—“

“Calibrating.”

“Exactly.” 

She picked up the datapad as he turned to leave. Next to her private terminal, Garrus could see a picture of Shepard with her mother, the family resemblance striking despite the difference in their ages, and next to that, a picture frame turned down on its face. Alenko, undoubtedly. Garrus would have liked to smash his fist in that smug, smiling face for not giving her a chance. He was glad Shepard was putting that attachment in the past—she deserved better. Much better.


	20. Really Happening

The mess hall was full when Garrus decided he’d done enough calibrations for one morning and went to find something to eat. Gardner did his best with the dextro supplies, and Garrus was polite about it, but he would rather have eaten the stock of dextro field rations they kept on hand for emergencies. He peered at the gelatinous mass of … something on his plate. “Looks great.”

“Tweaked the recipe.” Gardner looked at him expectantly.

“Oh, yes?” Garrus wished he had left it alone … or maybe he didn’t. If it looked this bad after tweaking, how bad must it have looked before?

“You be sure to tell me what you think.”

“I will, definitely.”

With which lie Garrus took the plate and found an empty seat. A couple of the Cerberus hires at the table looked at him apprehensively, but Shepard had made it more than clear that the alien members of the crew were to be treated with respect at all times, so they quickly looked back at their plates. Conversation stilled, though, and Garrus was irritated by it. Couldn’t they just think of him as another being with intelligence, just like they were? Humans could be so narrow-minded.

Then he chuckled at himself, because of course a human on a turian ship would have garnered much the same sort of attention, if not outright hostility. 

He poked at the jelly thing with his fork and was somewhat relieved when it didn’t slide off the plate in search of new adventures. He considered tasting it, then considered having his head examined.

“Look here, you Cerberus bitch, you keep at me like this and I’ll tear this ship apart!” The voice came from Miranda’s office, just off the main hall, and was shortly followed by the voice’s owner, Jack, the crazy biotic girl they’d rescued from a prison ship. She stalked through the mess, glaring at anyone who looked at her. Fortunately, the crew was justifiably terrified of her, so after a few furtive glances everyone looked carefully away. 

No sooner had the elevator doors closed behind Jack than a squabble broke out at one of the tables over the New Orleans Loa’s biotiball victory over the Usaru Maestros. One daring crewmember was insisting the humans must have cheated because no human team could beat an asari team straight up, and she was being roundly shouted over and at by her fellow crew.

Above the din rose the voice of Grunt, the krogan. “Krogan might is superior to human. Do not dare to contest me!”

“Yeah? Let’s see, turtle boy.” It was Jacob, who appeared to be carrying a large chip on his shoulder these days. 

Grunt’s roar of rage was followed by both of them heading for the elevator, probably on the way to the weight room. Garrus hoped it survived the experience.

The biotiball argument calmed suddenly, and Garrus looked up to see Shepard standing behind the lone Maestros supporter with a hand on her shoulder. A couple of sentences and Shepard’s soft smile and a crisp order and the table cleared, the crewmembers suddenly remembering places they had to be. Shepard got a cup of the tea she preferred, sitting down across from Garrus and sipping it with relief.

“Long day?”

“They all are, these days. What’s wrong with everyone?”

He looked at her with surprise. “You’re leading a team into a suicide mission and you’re wondering why everyone’s snapping at each other?”

She narrowed her eyes thoughtfully over the rim of the cup, then shook her head. “Good point.”

Garrus nodded. “They’ll get over it.”

“Or they’ll kill each other.”

“I doubt it. Give them some shore leave, should clear everything right up.” He chuckled suddenly. “You people sure don’t prepare for high-risk operations like turians.”

“I imagine there are a lot of things we don’t do like turians.” 

Was it Garrus’s imagination, or did her eyes darken and her breath catch as if she meant something more than just combat tactics? He decided it must be his own stress level sneaking up on him and studiously ignored the possibility.

“So how do turians get ready for high-risk operations?” Shepard asked. “Combat simulator?”

“Good call. Violence in general, really. Turian ships have training rooms for exercise, combat sims, even full-contact sparring. Whatever lets people work off stress.”

“Your crewmembers fight each other before a mission? Don’t you risk falling short of a full complement if someone gets injured?”

“That’s half the excitement, taking someone down without lasting injury.” Garrus could feel adrenaline pounding through his veins just thinking about it. “And it’s supervised, of course.” He chuckled at a sudden idea. “It’s a great way to settle grudges amicably. You should let Jack and Miranda try it.”

Shepard was tempted for a moment, then shook her head regretfully. “I’m not sure I’d trust either of them not to get carried away.”

“You might be surprised—Jack might consider it a victory in and of itself to keep her head while Miranda lost hers.”

“I suppose. I’ll give it some thought.” She tilted her head a little, looking at him curiously. “You ever take part?”

“Oh, sure. Good exercise.” He nodded as a memory came to him. “I remember right before one mission, we were about to hit a batarian pirate squad. Risky. There was only one way in that made any sense, but this recon scout had been pushing back at me, insisting she had a better way. We’d really been at each other’s throats. She eventually suggested we settle it in the ring.”

“Did you go easy on her?”

Garrus laughed. “Hardly. We were the top-ranked hand-to-hand specialists on the ship. I had reach, but she had flexibility. We went nine rounds before the judge called it a draw. There were a lot of unhappy betters in the training room.” Without thinking, he added the usual capper. “We held a tiebreaker in her quarters later. I had reach, but she had—“ He realized suddenly who he was talking to, and cleared his throat, finishing in a faint voice. “Flexibility.” He cleared his throat. “More than one way to work off stress, I guess.”

Shepard leaned across the table, her eyes wide and—no question about it—darker than usual. “Are you, um, carrying any particular stress right now, Garrus?”

She couldn’t mean what it sounded like she meant. No. This was Shepard, and he was imagining things. “I … don’t know. Maybe?”

She took a deep breath. “Maybe I could help you with that.”

She didn’t mean it, she didn’t mean it, she didn’t mean it, he chanted inwardly, stumbling over his words in his haste not to misunderstand her just because of what he had occasionally fantasized about hearing her say. “I … uh … didn’t think you’d feel like sparring, Commander.” 

“I’d hate to disappoint the betters.” She was more sure of herself now, leaning farther across the table, her voice stronger. “I was thinking more of skipping straight to the tiebreaker. We could test your reach … and my flexibility.”

Spirits. Well, there was no longer much room for misunderstanding … unless he had suddenly been dropped into the porn vid of his most satisfying fantasies and no one had told him. He ran a hand over his jaw, at a complete loss for a response. “Um … I didn’t … I mean, I never knew you had a weakness for men with scars.”

Those beautiful eyes were softer now, open and vulnerable. “Just you, Garrus.”

“Shepard. Zia.” He could barely think, so shocked by the idea that this was really happening, after all the times he had told himself it was impossible. “You know there’s no one in the galaxy I respect more than you.”

“But you’re not interested.”

“No! I mean, yes!” he said hastily, hating the pain and doubt that crossed her face. “It’s just—I never thought you—it’s just … does that even … work?” He was stuttering like it was his first time in the ring. _Get it together, Vakarian_.

“We could find out.”

“I … think you might have to give me some time to sort this out.” Was he really being this lukewarm? After having dreamed of this so long, he was suddenly gripped by fear. What if he hurt her? What if he let her down? She deserved so much better than she’d been given.

“Sure, Garrus. Take your time.”

He could tell he had hurt her by the stiffness of her posture as she left the mess. He stared down at the gelatinous goo on his plate and stuck the fork resolutely in it. Eating this … whatever it was would be his penance.


	21. Interspecies Awkwardness

Garrus’s back slammed up against the wall. Next to him, Shepard took up the same stance. Closer to the corner, she peered around it.

“Still there?” Garrus whispered.

“Yes.”

“Five more coming this way,” Tali called from farther down the mineshaft.

“Only five? Piece of cake.” Garrus slammed another heat sink home, readying his weapon.

“So, no tension, then, Garrus?” Shepard asked. She sighted around the corner and fired.

“We’re in a mine infested with husks, Shepard, for, what, the tenth time?”

“At least,” Tali agreed.

“What’s to be stressed about?”

Shepard grinned up at him, ejecting the used heat sink from her gun. “I just thought you might need some of that tension eased later, that’s all.”

Garrus nearly choked, the breath leaving his body all in a rush, as he followed her meaning. She hadn’t pursued her offer to “ease tension” together in the last couple of days, and he had been worried that his unprepared, startled response to it had offended her. Apparently not.

“Shepard, maybe this isn’t exactly the time …”

She blinked at him, all wide-eyed innocence. “I thought you said this was a piece of cake. At least ten times before, right? Doesn’t that make this the perfect time?”

“Time for what?” Tali asked. She turned the pointed cone of her visor in their direction, staring so pointedly Garrus thought he could almost see her eyes through the purple-tinted plastic that covered her face. “Oh!” she gasped suddenly, looking at them if possible more intently. “No! No, it is definitely not time for that. Not in my hearing, at least.” She looked back down the hallway and squeezed off two rapid shots.

“There’s no ‘that’,” Garrus protested.

“Isn’t there?” Shepard asked mildly.

“On the ship, Zia. Please.”

Whatever there was in his desperate growl seemed to be what she had been looking for, because she winked at him before disappearing around the corner.

Tali fired again, cooing at her defense drone as it distracted the husks, before moving next to Garrus, who had been as effectively removed from combat as if Shepard had taken his gun away, his head spinning. Who knew that all it took to keep a turian off his game was one small human commander? 

“So how long has this been going on, then?” Tali asked.

“It really isn’t.”

“Good luck telling Shepard that.” She tipped the cone of her visor up toward his face curiously. “And why would you want to, anyway? If you have a chance to be with Shepard, why wouldn’t you take it?”

That certainly was the million-credit question, Garrus reflected. For all that he had dreamed of her showing an interest in him, he had never expected it to actually happen … and now that it had, the very idea filled him with a terror that he wasn’t sure he wanted to look at too closely. As clear a case of “be careful what you wish for” as he’d ever seen, he thought, following Tali around the corner, where he spent a satisfying half an hour working out his frustrations on the husks.

In respect to Tali’s wishes, it seemed, Shepard didn’t say anything further as they detonated the alien machine deep in the mine and took the shuttle back up to the _Normandy_. But as soon as Tali was gone, Shepard stepped in front of him, effectively trapping him there in the shuttle bay. “There’s no ‘that’, Garrus?”

“Shepard, I …”

“What is it? Because I know it’s not that you aren’t interested.”

He couldn’t deny that, although he was a little embarrassed that it had been obvious to her. “It’s …” He seized on the most obvious issue at hand. “I’ve never really considered cross-species intercourse.” He winced at the term. “And damn, saying it that way doesn’t help. Now I feel dirty and clinical. I just—wonder if we would even be compatible. You’re so soft, and I’m so—“ He caught himself, clearing his throat nervously. “Not soft. I just … wonder if you wouldn’t be better off looking somewhere closer to home. This—wouldn’t be what you’re used to.”

She caught her breath sharply. “Kaidan. You think this is about Kaidan.”

Garrus didn’t argue. Because as much as he was legitimately worried that he could easily hurt her if they pursued a physical relationship … yeah, this was a little bit about Kaidan.

“Come on.” Shepard didn’t look back over her shoulder as she led him to the elevator.

In her quarters, Garrus noticed that EDI’s avatar had been dismantled. Shepard followed his gaze and nodded. “Perks of command. EDI agreed there should be one place on the ship where I can have a private conversation.” She sighed, looking around the room. “I suspect it’s bugged anyway, but this is at least a little better.” Sitting down on the edge of her bed, she gestured him to the couch. 

“What’s on your mind, Zia?”

“Do you know how I came back to life?” Since he obviously didn’t, because she had never told him, she kept going without waiting for an answer. “I woke up when the station was attacked.”

“Naturally.” He shook his head. Could she never catch a break?

“I had my armor on and a gun in my hand before I was even sure I remembered my name. Once we had fought our way through the station, Jacob and Miranda and the Illusive Man told me some things … but not enough. I didn’t know where any of you were, if you had survived the _Normandy_ , nothing. It nearly drove me crazy. And I know what you’re thinking—but the first person on my mind wasn’t Kaidan, Garrus. It was you. I needed you—your calm strength, your wise counsel, your support. When you took off that helmet on Omega and I saw it was you, it felt like … like I could fly. And when you took that rocket to the face and I thought I’d lost you, I felt lost, too.”

“You were dead for two years, Zia. Do you know what that did to me? To us?” he hastily corrected himself.

Her brown eyes softened, indicating she had heard the crack in his voice that had betrayed his true emotions. “I can only imagine.” She reached for his hand, and his fingers closed around hers. He looked at their joined hands, hers so small, so soft, so alien, and let go, thinking how easy it would be for him to hurt her.

“So there you are, you have me back on your ship, and you want me to believe you never thought about Kaidan again? I was there on Horizon, remember.” He wanted to believe she had never thought about Kaidan again, but he knew better. He had seen how the scene on Horizon affected her.

“No, of course not. I thought about Kaidan, I wondered where he was. When I saw him on Horizon, everything we had been to one another came flooding back. But then—well, you saw how he was. He couldn’t stop to think, couldn’t give me the benefit of the doubt. And when we got back to the ship, I thought about him, and realized he had always been that way. Alliance above everything. So much insistence on the regs, so bound to the rules.”

Garrus chuckled. “So were you.”

“Until you came along,” she agreed. “I’m still a rule follower, but I’m learning how to be a maverick from you, Garrus. And that’s the difference, in the end. Kaidan was never going to see me as a person first—I was always going to be Commander Shepard, a fellow soldier, first. You saw through that from the beginning. You saw me for who I am. And that’s why … why I don’t want someone ‘closer to home’. I want you, Garrus, my best friend, the person I trust most in this galaxy.” She got off the bed and moved to the couch, sitting next to him. “Is that so hard to believe?”

“I …” He swallowed, wanting to reach for her, wanting to accept what she was offering, but so afraid. What if he wasn’t what she wanted when it came down to it? What if he wasn’t good enough for her? What if he hurt her? 

Zia put her hand over his again. “If you can manage the delicate calibrations you’re always making, I have to believe you won’t hurt me.”

He glanced at her sideways. “Zia. While I enjoy calibrating, I’m not exactly … passionate about it.”

“Could’ve fooled me.” She grinned at him.

He held her hand, carefully, a fraction more tightly. “I want this, too. I do. I’m just—“

“Afraid.”

“Yes. I’ll … do some research to figure out how this should work. Maybe find some music.” He cleared his throat. “It’ll either be a night to treasure … or some horrible interspecies awkwardness thing.”

“You sure do know how to woo a girl, Vakarian.”

“What can I say? It’s a gift.”


	22. Romantic Advice

The research Garrus wanted to do on interspecies … contact proved surprisingly difficult to settle down to. Awkward as it was, he wanted no witnesses to whatever he was about to pull up on his screen, not even accidental ones, and that meant he needed Shepard off the ship. Not to mention that the idea of watching human-turian intimate vids while she was on the _Normandy_ was equal parts hideously embarrassing and thoroughly arousing.

The trouble was that any time Shepard left the ship, she took him with her. Which was flattering, and he was happy to be there to watch her back—in the protection sense, he told himself firmly, not at all in the ogling her backside and wondering what it looked like under the armor sense—but didn’t afford him a lot of privacy. Finally, in desperation, he invented a problem integrating the new Thannix cannon into the _Normandy_ ’s weapons array, and asked her to take Tali along with herself and Jack to Pragia to blow up Jack’s former home. Shepard was reluctant, but apparently Garrus was more persuasive than he’d given himself credit for, and eventually the shuttle took off with the three women aboard. He hoped Tali’s calm presence could help Shepard deal with Jack, who was volatile at the best of times, and on her home planet facing the history of whatever was done to her as a child would be a smoldering volcano ready to blow, he was certain.

Still, Shepard and Tali had been through worse, and Jack genuinely liked Shepard, for all she tried not to show it, so Garrus hoped for the best, locked the door to the forward battery, and started punching in keywords on his private terminal that would have had him blushing right up to his crest if turians were capable of such a thing.

It was a train wreck. Given how recent the First Contact War was, there hadn’t been a lot of time for humans and turians to develop a cross-species relationship in general, much less specifically in the bedroom, so much of what was out there was purely speculative … and filthy, violent, and disturbing, for the most part. Garrus shut the terminal down and sat there staring at it in horror. Surely that couldn’t be his future with Shepard!

The thought disturbed him so thoroughly that he couldn’t just sit here alone. He unlocked the doors and moved on unsteady legs through the mess hall and to the elevator, his feet carrying him toward the cockpit without much thought on his part. 

“Garrus,” Joker acknowledged as he stepped inside the door. “She’s still on the planet, and nothing’s blown up yet.”

“That’s good to know.” Garrus thought about Shepard, so small and soft and delicate, so easily hurt. He looked down at himself, so many hard edges, his claws so sharp … It would be a miracle if she survived an intimate moment without some kind of permanent scarring, he thought in despair.

“Garrus, I took the liberty of expanding your extranet search and found some alternative vids on your topic,” EDI spoke up brightly.

“What?”

“You were searching for—“

“I know what I was searching for!” he interrupted, desperate to keep her silent. “Didn’t Shepard talk to you about times when it’s okay to help and times when it isn’t?”

“Help?” Joker swiveled his chair around, looking up at Garrus with concern for his beloved ship. “Help with what? Something wrong with the guns? If you’ve broken anything—”

“No, no, the guns are fine. It’s … nothing.”

“Garrus was searching for assistance on how to be intimate with the Commander,” EDI filled in helpfully.

There was a silence in the cockpit, and then it filled with Joker’s deafening hoots of laughter.

Garrus stood there, trying to determine whether Shepard’s anger if he damaged her pilot would be worth the satisfaction of breaking Joker’s jaw, and how the Illusive Man would react if he reprogrammed EDI to keep her damned mouth shut.

At last Joker seemed to run out of steam, gasping his laughter to a standstill. “Oh, man, that was good. I needed that.”

“Are you quite finished?” Garrus asked coldly.

Joker chuckled quietly, considering. “Yeah, I think so. Come on, you have to admit that it’s pretty hilarious that all it takes is the Commander batting those big brown eyes at you and you’re on the extranet watching porn vids like a teenager. On second thought, maybe I’m not done.” He broke down in more laughter.

“Mr. Moreau, Garrus does not seem to feel that this is a joking matter.”

“Thank you, EDI, I can speak for myself. You’ve done enough.”

“I merely thought I could assist you in your endeavor. Perhaps you need something less speculative and more clinical.”

“Yes, clinical is the first word I thought of when contemplating a romantic evening,” Garrus snapped.

“Look, all jokes aside, Garrus, it’s the Commander. You care about her, anyone can see that if they’ve ever been in the same room with the two of you. It can’t be that hard.” Joker was looking at him with sympathy, which was really just salt in the open wound at this point. 

“Do I really need romantic advice from you?”

Joker frowned. “If you can’t get your head on straight and give her what she deserves, then you sure as hell need it from someone.” He swiveled his chair around and started punching buttons on the console, his straight back and silence indicating that the conversation was over.

Garrus left the cockpit, annoyed with both Joker and EDI, but mostly because they were right. Shepard deserved better than this paralyzing fear that had him dragging his feet, unable to reach for what he and she both wanted. The trouble was, he couldn’t seem to let go of whatever it was he was so afraid of.


	23. Clinical Advice

After entirely too long standing paralyzed in the CIC, trying to avoid the embarrassment of whatever line of questioning Chambers would come up with if she noticed him, Garrus considered what EDI had said, that he needed something less speculative and more clinical. Maybe that was the problem, he needed a better sense of what exactly the challenges would be, and then he could wrap his head around them and come up with a solution. He was good at solving problems, always had been. Surely if he viewed Shepard as a problem to solve, just another calibration, he wouldn’t feel quite so terrified at the idea of being intimate with her.

He went into the lab, where Mordin Solus was moving between stations with an almost dizzying speed, humming snatches of song as he went. That was a relief to Garrus—according to Shepard, it was the moments when Mordin was still and silent, working only at one location, when he couldn’t be interrupted. Garrus supposed he understood that. Sometimes when a particular calibration was especially tricky, he was almost afraid to breathe until it was done, and he certainly wouldn’t want to be interrupted in the middle of one of those.

But he hated to disturb Mordin if he was in a good groove, and so he stood halfway into the room feeling—and no doubt looking—indecisive, until Mordin looked up and seemed to see him there for the first time.

“Garrus Vakarian. Need something, or just passing through on the way to somewhere else?”

“I … could use some, er, clinical advice, if you have a moment.”

“Ah. Yes. Thought you might be stopping by.” Mordin took a tray out of the machine in front of him, stuck it in what looked like an oven, turned the dial, and shut the oven door. “May have made an error. Incorrect assumption. Highly embarrassing.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. Commander Shepard … thought her constant interruptions meant one thing, in fact, not that at all.” Mordin shook his head.

“What did you think her interruptions meant?”

Mordin flushed slightly. “Took them as interest in personal relationship, not as professional courtesy, natural instinct of good commander to care for crew’s needs.”

“Ah.” Garrus considered that for a moment, wondering if human-salarian relationships were more common than human-turian. He would imagine so, but still, they weren’t exactly everyday matters, either. “I hope it wasn’t too much of a disappointment to you.”

The salarian gave him a bewildered look. Clearly the thought that he might be disappointed not to be the object of Shepard’s affections had never crossed his mind. “Not what you came to talk about, I hope?”

“No. Well … sort of.”

“Sort of?” Mordin repeated carefully. Then, “Oh. Yes. Of course. Perfectly natural.”

“It is? Because it seems pretty unnatural to me, and I can’t figure out how it … works.” Garrus realized he hadn’t exactly been clear, and he’d hate to get to the end of this conversation and find out they were talking about two different things. “Er, what I mean to say is that the Commander and I are considering … a, um, personal relationship, as you say, and I was hoping you might have some … advice. Clinical advice.” Once upon a time, he reflected, he’d been considered good at this sort of thing. He wouldn’t have needed advice from a salarian on how to go about it. That’s what all this cross-species relations had gotten them—no one knew what the hell they were doing anymore.

“Yes. Understood that. Medical conundrum. Not typical, human-turian.” Mordin nodded. “Sexual activity normal stress release for humans and turians. Still … recommend caution. Warn of chafing. Will talk to Shepard, recommend analgesic.”

Garrus winced. He’d never thought of chafing. Was there no end to the ways Shepard could end up hurt if they went through with this? “Caution,” he repeated. “Chafing. Right. Anything else?”

“Turians based on dextro-amino acids. Humans on levo-amino. Ingestion of opposing tissue could provoke allergic reactions. Anaphylactic shock possible. So … ah, recommend against ingesting.”

Ingesting? Anaphylactic shock? Was it really worth all this to take their relationship to the next level? Garrus blinked, not sure if he could handle any more. “And?”

“And … will forward advice booklet to your quarters.” Mordin activated his omni-tool and tapped a few keys on it. “Valuable diagrams, positions comfortable for both species, erogenous zone overviews. Can also supply oils or ointments to reduce discomfort. Will give EDI electronic relationship aid demonstration vids to use as necessary.”

“No! I mean, let’s, ah, leave EDI out of this.” Just what Garrus needed, more electronic advice. Although the advice booklet was more like what he had come in here to get in the first place. The anaphylactic shock and the chafing were just bonuses. “Thanks. I appreciate the warning.” He turned to leave, his legs feeling unsteady beneath him. What he wanted from Shepard could actually kill her. How could he let her put herself in danger for a little … stress release?

“Garrus. Did not mean to discourage. Believe all beings should enjoy themselves while possible. Would not have considered human-turian a natural relationship, but think you and Shepard can set precedent.” He nodded. “And if needed, will be here, studying cell reproduction. Much simpler. Less alcohol and mood music required.”

“Thank you,” Garrus repeated, genuinely moved at the evident sincerity in the salarian’s voice. He wished he believed it was safe for them to set a precedent, but everything Mordin had told him had only convinced him that he was the wrong man for Shepard.

He locked himself into the forward battery, and when Shepard knocked at his door he sent her away, not sure how to tell her that he couldn’t take her up on her offer, wishing it had never come up, knowing now he had to hurt her one way or the other when it was the last thing he wanted to do.


	24. A Good Sharp Kick in the Rear

Garrus held his breath, turning the pliers very slowly. Almost there. Then a sharp, abrupt knock came on the door of the forward battery, and the pliers slipped from his fingers and clattered across the floor, landing against the far wall in a hard-to-reach corner. He swore, getting to his feet. Whoever was at the door had better be here for a good reason.

For once, he hoped it wasn’t Shepard. They hadn’t spoken much since he’d talked to Mordin and become thoroughly convinced that they were a bad idea as something more than friends, and she’d been decidedly distant on their brief trip to Illium to give Liara the intel they’d collected on the Shadow Broker. Granted, it had been a pretty packed visit, with a bomb and a rogue Spectre and a whole squad of mercs … but really, that was a normal day for them. 

Another rap at the door, sharper than before. 

“Who is it?” Garrus snapped.

“Liara.”

Oh. Come to think of it, he had a few things to say to Liara, who was aboard as they traveled to the Shadow Broker’s secret lair in hopes of rescuing a friend of hers. “Come in, then.”

Liara stalked into the room, closing and locking the doors behind her before turning to Garrus and demanding, “What are you thinking?”

“What do you mean?”

“You know exactly what I mean. Shepard.”

Garrus blinked at her. He could have sworn she and Shepard hadn’t had enough time on Illium to discuss the situation, and he was surprised that Shepard would talk about it even with Liara. 

But before he could splutter a denial, Liara advanced on him, her hands on her hips. “Don’t pretend there’s nothing going on. I know you, and I know Shepard, and I am a very good information broker, which requires being able to read people.”

“So if you already know everything, what is it you need me to tell you?” he countered.

“Why you’re treating her as if you’re not interested.”

“I … can’t talk about this with you.”

“But you could talk about it with Mordin? And with Joker? And the AI?”

He winced. Apparently she really was a good information broker. “Liara …”

“Don’t Liara me.”

“You don’t know the whole story.”

“I think I know enough.”

“What are you doing here, slapping my hand for not playing nice with others?”

She stared up at him, her mouth open in shock and anger. “Are you being glib with me? You’re breaking Shepard’s heart, and you’re being glib with me?”

“Hardly breaking her heart,” Garrus protesed, trying to swallow the guilt he felt—and deserved—at her words.

“You don’t think so? How often do you think a woman like Shepard puts herself out there, Garrus? Do you think it’s easy for her? It’s probably harder for her than for anyone, given the pressures she carries. She chose you. Out of everyone she could have picked, she chose you, and she brought herself to you, and you turned your back on her.”

Garrus knew perfectly well that she was right, which was why he snapped back at her, “I see what this is about. You wish it was you she’d turned to. I saw the Shepard shrine in your apartment.”

Liara blinked, covering her reaction almost instantly, but not before Garrus had seen the pain on her face. “You’re right,” she said softly. “I wish it was me. I would have done anything if it had been me. But it isn’t me, it’s you. And I know you care for her just as much as I do, so what are you doing?”

“Look at me, Liara. I’m … a turian. She’s a human.”

“And?”

“And … I’m all metallic bones and claws and mandibles, sharp edges, hard surfaces. And she’s—none of those things.”

Liara frowned. “This is because you’re afraid you’ll hurt her?”

“Have you seen the vids? They’re …” He shook his head. “Disturbing. And Mordin Solus was talking about anaphylactic shock. I can’t risk— I can’t.”

“Garrus, turians and asari have been mating for centuries. Asari are shaped much like humans, with the curves and the … lack of claws. Do you think every asari for generations who has bonded with a turian has taken her life into her hands?”

“When you put it that way … probably not.”

“You have to go to her, Garrus. You want to be with her, she wants to be with you. Hasn’t what we’ve all been through shown us all that life is too short to let such opportunities pass you by?”

He nodded. “Yes. Yes, it has. Thank you.”

“You needed a good sharp kick in the rear.”

“Not exactly what I was thanking you for … but you’re not wrong. Liara.”

“Garrus?”

“Why didn’t you tell me? You knew what Cerberus was trying to do. You retrieved her body for them! Why didn’t you ask me to help you? Why didn’t you tell me there was a chance to have her back? I was—lost without her.”

“We all were. But there was never more than a chance. And the things I had to do to get her body back, to preserve it for Cerberus rather than letting the Collectors get to it … I wouldn’t have wanted you to do those things, or even be aware of them. Feron—the person who was helping me—he betrayed the Shadow Broker for me. I thought he was dead all this time. I never wanted anything like that to happen to you, or anyone. I took the risks so no one else would have to.”

“But you knew she was still out there. You knew she wasn’t dead.”

“I knew Cerberus had her. When she walked through my office door, looking just like—It was … indescribable.” Liara grasped his arm. “Which makes it all the more important for you to make things right, Garrus. We have her back when we’d thought we lost her. Make the most of that. Don’t waste another minute being afraid. For all our sakes.”


	25. No More Research

Garrus tapped at the door of Shepard’s quarters, hearing her soft “Come in” in response. She was in the bathroom, the door open and the water running, as he came in, and he started to clear his throat and step carefully back out of the room rather than disturb her, but she stepped out holding two dripping wineglasses that she had evidently just been rinsing and called his name.

He was glad she’d done so, because the sight of her was enough to drive his name, and everything else, straight out of his head. He was used to seeing her in her hardsuit, or in the admittedly rather tight-fitting uniform she wore on the _Normandy_ , or occasionally in her dress blues … but he had never seen her look like this before. She wore a tight-fitting black leather dress that stopped just above the knee, revealing very shapely legs in ridiculously impractical high-heeled shoes. Her shoulders were bare, the neckline narrow but plunging just low enough to make Garrus want it to plunge just a little more. He couldn’t take his eyes off her; he could barely breathe.

And then he stopped breathing entirely when he realized what it must mean that she had dressed like this for her evening with Liara. The asari had left the _Normandy_ after leaving Shepard’s quarters, returning to the Shadow Broker’s massive ship above Halgalaz. Returning to be the Shadow Broker, if Garrus understood the situation correctly. But before that, an evening alone with Shepard. The two of them, a bottle of wine, Shepard hurting from Garrus’s perceived rejection of her advances, Liara there, so understanding, so much in love with Shepard herself …

“I’ll … uh, ahem, just see myself out.”

“Garrus.” Her voice stopped him at the door. “Where are you going?”

“Did you have a good time with Liara?” he asked, unable to keep the edge from his voice.

“Yes. Is that what you came up here to ask me?”

“Does it matter?”

“It does to me. Talk to me, Garrus.”

“Shepard …” He turned back to her, standing there so small and so beautiful and so not how anyone else had ever seen the great Commander Shepard. Except Liara. “Are you and Liara together now?” The words came out in a rush.

“It would serve you right if I said yes.”

“It would … but would it be true?”

“No. I thought—I thought you and I were going to be together, but I guess I was wrong. You didn’t seem very enthusiastic about the idea.”

“I was terrified.”

“By me?”

Garrus shook his head. “By myself.” He raised his hands, showing her the way they trembled. “I can take shot after shot, the worst firefights, the scariest places, and not a twitch. My hands are rock steady. But just thinking about … touching you ...” He shivered at the idea. “I was afraid of losing control. Who am I kidding? I am afraid of losing control. I don’t know how this works, Shepard, how I can be what you need.”

“You already are, Garrus. You always have been.” 

He thought of mentioning Kaidan, of referencing the picture frame face down on her desk, but this was no longer about Kaidan. 

This was about Zia and Garrus. They had something special, he and she. They always had, since the beginning. He understood her. She let him talk her down when she needed it, she let him take care of her when she wouldn’t have accepted that from anyone else. She had come to him because she wanted more, and he had given her the cold shoulder in his terrible fear.

“Zia.” He climbed the steps up to the alcove where her desk was, where she stood with the two wineglasses in her hand. “Will you let me apologize, let me make it up to you?”

She set the glasses down behind her, tipping her head up toward him. “Are you apologizing?”

“With all my heart.”

“Then I suppose I’ll think about it.” But she was smiling, much to his relief.

Tentatively, gently, he put a hand on her shoulder, feeling the supple leather beneath his fingers, daring to ease one fingertip off the leather and on to her bare skin. She caught her breath at the touch, her smile widening, and Garrus slid his whole hand across until it was cupping the point of her shoulder. “This is quite a dress.”

“Do you like it?”

“It might take some getting used to.” He stroked her skin, gently. “Is it for a special occasion?”

Shepard chuckled. “I’d like to pretend I got it for you, to finally shake you out of your fears, but I have to tell the truth—I didn’t even pick it out.”

“Who did?” Who knew Shepard’s sizes so perfectly? The dress fit her like a glove. "And why are you wearing it now?"

“You’re kind of adorable when you’re trying to pretend you’re not jealous, you know that?”

“I’m not jealous,” Garrus protested, “just … curious.”

“Uh-huh.”

“So?”

“So I was trying it on so Liara could help me put the look together, and the dress came from Kasumi. She wants me to go to some party with her, to steal back a thing—“

“You’re going on a job, in that?” Garrus frowned. “She does know you’re not really the sneaking type, right?”

“I told her. I think she thinks that’s half the fun. Don’t worry,” she added, “she’s promised me that she’s going to smuggle my armor and weapons in for the back half of the mission, but I have to charm the people at some party first.” Her voice dropped, low and intimate, and Garrus forgot how to breathe again. “Or am I not the charming type, either?”

“No, you’ve certainly bewitched me.”

Shepard took a step forward, their bodies nearly touching. Garrus wanted to bend down and kiss her, to really take this to the next level … but the old fear still held him back. He took in a breath, wanting to explain, but Shepard held his arms when he would have stepped away. 

“Garrus. I’m not trying to pressure you, really. If you’re not comfortable with this, it’s okay.”

“Shepard, you are the best friend I’ve got in this screwed-up galaxy. I don’t want anything to ruin that—but I think I’m beginning to see that this can be both. More. And I want that, Zia, more than I can tell you. I’m not sure I’m ready to move too fast, but I promise, you never have to worry about making me uncomfortable.” He showed her his hand, the fingers still trembling. “Nervous, yes … but never uncomfortable.”

She closed her hand around his, the firm, sure grip making his fingers stop shaking. “Take as much time as you need. Um … how much time, exactly?”

“I don’t know. Until all the clinical terms Mordin used are out of my head?”

“You spoke to Mordin? No wonder.”

“It might not have been the wisest choice,” Garrus admitted. “It’ll be before we throw ourselves into hell for the good of the galaxy, that I can promise you.” He put his hands on her shoulders, looking down into the softness of her brown eyes. “A few minutes that are just for us.”

“I like the sound of that.”

“I’ll do some research, then, shall I?”

“No more research, Garrus. Let’s just … let it happen when it feels right.”

He nodded. “I like the sound of that.”


	26. On Both Sides

“Garrus, look at this.” Shepard was stopped in front of a kiosk.

He walked up behind her and, after a moment’s hesitation, put a hand gently on her shoulder. The casual touch was new, and made his heart beat faster as she leaned against him. The sense of intimacy, of belonging, was so sweet he wanted to drown in it.

“Listen to this,” she said, turning his attention to the news vid on the screen, Shepard’s old friend Emily Wong at the news desk. 

Wong was delivering a report, her eyes holding the camera unwaveringly. “C-Sec reports that a turian named Lantar Sidonis has turned himself in for the murder of ten people on Omega. Since Omega has no government that is recognized as such, there is no extradition, and C-Sec is uncertain how it will proceed investigating a claim regarding a crime in another location. Check back for updates on this unusual situation.”

Garrus turned away, startled and surprisingly unhappy. What was the value in Sidonis turning himself in? Who benefited from him being locked away in a cell somewhere? No one. He had squared with himself the fact that Sidonis was still alive by telling himself that Sidonis was filled with remorse, and that would lead him to turn his life around, to devote it to the benefit of others.

Zia frowned, obviously confused. “I’m sorry. I thought you’d be glad to hear he did the right thing.”

“The right thing? By getting locked up? Come on, Shepard, we both know that’s nothing but a waste of a life.”

“It’s justice, Garrus. You wanted justice.”

“I wanted him to atone!” Garrus corrected in an angry whisper, mindful of the people passing around them, and of Grunt, staring at them with great interest, not even pretending to be distracted by the hustle and bustle of the Citadel. “You can’t atone in a cell! This is just … It’s a pathetic attempt to get out of paying back what he owes.”

“I’m sure he doesn’t see it that way.”

“Of course you’re sure,” he snapped. “Little Alliance monkey, can’t think without your rules and regs guiding you.”

Shepard narrowed her brown eyes venomously, the shot having struck home exactly as true and sharp as he had meant it to. “I’ll see you back on the _Normandy_.”

“What, you’re benching me because I’m right?”

“I’m benching you because you’re insubordinate. You got a problem with that?” She was in his face now, challenging him with every one of her scant inches of height.

Garrus was right; he knew he was right, and what’s more, he was pretty sure she knew it, too. But she was still Commander Shepard, and her orders meant something. Especially here on the Citadel, where she was a Spectre. He was out of line—what was acceptable between the two of them was not acceptable in public. He nodded, confirming that he understood. “My apologies, Commander. I will report back to the ship at once.”

“Thank you, Vakarian,” she said crisply, turning her back on him and gesturing Grunt to follow. “Send Thane back, please.”

Thane. Of course it was Thane, he grumbled to himself. Thane with his courtly ways and his sinuous movements and his flexible body and his expressive black eyes that followed Shepard wherever she went like a man dying of thirst looks at a glass of water. Not that Shepard had ever encouraged the drell in his interest in her, Garrus had to admit to himself. Still, it was hard to imagine she’d chosen the one crewmember he couldn’t help comparing himself to as his replacement by accident.

He paced the confines of the forward battery for hours waiting for her to come back from the Citadel, and was relieved when it wasn’t long after EDI reported the shuttle had docked that Shepard appeared in the doorway. 

“You ready to talk?” she asked.

Garrus punched the button to close and lock the doors. “Are you ready to admit I was right?”

“The rule of law has value, Garrus!”

“Not as much value as actually living your life to the benefit of others. He owes the universe ten lives—how is he going to repay that debt languishing in a cell with three hots and a cot every day? He’s pretty well set, when you think of it. Safe, warm, well-fed …”

“You talk about prison like it’s a hotel.”

“Might as well be.”

“Said no one who’d ever actually been there,” Shepard snapped.

“You forget, I used to run the Citadel’s jails.”

“And I just bet you treated your prisoners with kid gloves, making sure they had their milk and cookies at bedtime.”

Garrus had to admit that he had not, in fact, treated his prisoners with any kind of gloves.

“I thought not.”

“Fine, there are downsides. But you have to admit that no one benefits from Sidonis’s life while he sits behind bars.”

Shepard nodded. “I had also hoped he would find a way to atone. But you’re talking about a man with very little imagination, Garrus. Someone who could think creatively probably could have found a way out of the situation he was in on Omega. Why should he be any different now? He looked for the easiest solution, the most obvious. He found it. And there’s no guarantee that he’ll go to jail. I talked to Emily and she said they’re fairly stumped. No one’s ever admitted on the Citadel to committing a crime on Omega before, and Aria T’Loak is hardly the type to take on more work when she can sit there on her couch and laugh at the Citadel being stuck with her problem.”

Garrus could see Aria doing just that. And Sidonis had never been a particularly clever man, that much was true. “You have a point,” he conceded.

“So do you. I don’t mean to say that I think jail is the only answer. You’re right, his life would be better used elsewhere.”

They looked at each other, not sure where to go from there. “I’m sorry about the Alliance monkey crack. You haven’t been that hidebound and rules-shackled in a long time.”

“I’m sorry I brought it up in public rather than discussing it in private. I know how personal and painful a subject is. It just … didn’t occur to me that you wouldn’t be happy about the news, and it should have.”

Wordlessly, Garrus opened his arms and Shepard fit herself there against him, so warm and soft and perfect. It wasn’t their first fight ever, but it was their first since they became … whatever they now were, and certainly cut closer to the bone than anything they had thrown at one another previously. Garrus was glad to be past it with understanding on both sides.


	27. The Geth

Shepard was armoring up with her usual efficiency. Perhaps more than her usual efficiency. Every latch clicked even more firmly than usual, every piece of equipment was slung over her head with ostentatious purpose, and she was studiously ignoring both Garrus and Tali.

"Shepard, you have to listen to me," Tali tried again.

"We're doing this," Shepard told her, voice muffled through the inside of the top of her hardsuit.

"You can't trust that … thing. It's a geth!" Tali's voice had grown strident in her near-hysteria. She'd been outraged when Shepard had chosen to turn on the geth they had found in the derelict Reaper. And although Garrus understood Shepard's curiosity—the geth had spoken, had known Shepard's name, and was wearing a piece of armor on its body with the N7 logo on it, armor Garrus was sure had once been Shepard's—he had to sympathize with Tali. After all the geth they had all killed together, how could Shepard even consider going off with one onto a geth ship? The thing had told her a tale about all the geth being split into two camps, one that followed the Reapers and one that didn't, and Shepard believed it that there was a way to destroy the geth who followed the Reapers.

"Those things killed my father." Tali's voice was near to breaking, her anger and sorrow too deep to contain.

At that, Shepard stopped with the armor and put a hand on Tali's arm. "I know they did. And I am sorry, you know I am. But if there's a chance to take out the geth who follow the Old Machines, as they call them, to even the playing field even that little bit, don't we have to take it? And if Legion is lying, then we need to know that, too."

It was always her refrain—everything Shepard had done, all along, came at heart from a need to know. Garrus admired that about her, that she let her curiosity lead her into places most would never consider going, but it was foolhardy, as well, and often put her in danger. "Are you sure we shouldn't wait," he asked, "do some recon, scan the ship?"

She looked up at him, studying his face. "You think this is a bad idea, too?"

Garrus looked from Shepard to Tali and back, not really agreeing with either of them. "Yes and no. Tali's right, we've fought and killed so many of these things it's hard to see one as trustworthy, much less as an ally on a mission. But Shepard's right, too, that if we don't go see we'll never really know what the possibilities were."

"So you'll come with me?" Shepard asked, her face brightening with his agreement.

"Of course." If Tali hadn't been there, he would have reached for her, pulled her close, told her once more that there was nowhere she could go that he wouldn't have her back. But even with Tali there, the tone of his voice softened on its own, and Shepard's brown eyes said she understood what he wasn't saying.

"When the two of you are finished," Tali said acidly, "perhaps you can explain why you are taking the word of one of those murderous machines over mine."

"Tali, I promise, I am going to take precautions. I am. And I believe you know as much about the geth as any quarian living. But you don't know as much about the geth as the geth do. Who knows what we'll find on that ship—research, information, parts we can bring back for you to study—" She hurried past that point as Tali winced, remembering that was exactly what her father had been doing when the geth had taken over his ship and killed him. "I'll look for information, Garrus will watch Legion, and whatever we find out we'll give you so you can pass it on to your people. All the better if what we can tell them is that the geth no longer follow the Reapers."

Tali made a disgusted noise at the idea that Shepard might be buying that story.

"I know, you don't think it's possible. Let me go and find out." It was Shepard's persuasive voice. "And if anything happens, you and Grunt bring the other shuttle over and you can kill every geth aboard that ship, including Legion."

"I don't want to have to avenge you, Shepard!"

Garrus didn't particularly want to have to be avenged, either, but it was clear that Shepard had her mind made up, and nothing Tali could say was going to change that. "You won't have to avenge anyone," he assured her now. "I'll get her out of there if things go south." They exchanged a look. Even through her purple visor, Garrus could read the fear in Tali's eyes, fear he shared every time Shepard went on a mission he wasn't part of. They had lost her once; neither of them wanted to lose her again. "I promise."

"Well … just don't trust it, all right?"

"We won't," Shepard said.

"And don't turn your back on it."

"Of course not."

"And … be safe."

"Absolutely." Shepard gave Tali's arm a last squeeze and headed for the shuttle, helmet tucked under her arm.

As they watched her go, Tali asked, "Garrus, do you think she remembers what it was like when she died?"

He shook his head. "Not like we do."

"Take care of her."

"Absolutely."


	28. Collectors

Shepard paced back and forth, arms folded across her chest. Garrus could see what a tight hold she had on herself, how upset she was and how hard she was trying to overcome it and deal with the situation calmly.

“Go over it again,” Miranda demanded.

Joker, shivering miserably as he sat on the CIC table, gamely attempted to do just that, detailing as best he could—with interjections from EDI—the arrival on the ship of the Collectors, and his trip through the ducts to unshackle the AI and give EDI control of the ship so she could save it. And him. It had been a damned heroic, and tough, thing for anyone to do, much less for someone whose bones were so brittle he could barely walk. Garrus knew what a burden of guilt the pilot carried over the destruction of the original _Normandy_ and Shepard’s death. To have the second _Normandy_ under attack and be unable to save the rest of the crew … well, it was likely more than the broken ankle that had Joker shivering as though the ship had suddenly become a deep freeze.

“You lost everyone? Everyone? And damned near lost the ship, too?” Miranda was standing over him, shouting.

Shepard stepped in, a hand on Miranda’s shoulder pulling her back, only a moment before Garrus would have been unable to stop himself from doing so. 

“I know, all right?” Joker shouted back. “I was here.” He looked up at Shepard. “I tried. I really did.”

“Mr. Moreau did exceptionally well under extremely adverse circumstances,” EDI said. Garrus thought it seemed like her voice was … softer. More human? But that was impossible. She was just an AI. She didn’t have a personality that could change based on circumstances. “If anyone is to blame, I am,” the disembodied voice continued. “The harmful data in the Collector drive was even more sophisticated than the ‘black box’ Reaper viruses I was given.”

Shepard looked from person to person, her gaze finally settling on Joker. “I’m sorry I wasn’t here.” It had been an unusual circumstance—knowing she and her companions would have to work together as a larger unit once they reached the Collector base, she had taken them all together to a training facility on Illium. “If I had only left some people behind …”

Jacob pushed himself away from the wall, unfolding his arms. “What were one or two of us going to do against a Collector ship?”

“If you feel that way, how can you imagine that a dozen of us are going to take out an entire Collector base?” Garrus demanded. He and Jacob had reached a mutual understanding, but not much more than that.

“Beside the point,” Shepard said, shaking her head at both of them. She placed a gentle hand on Joker’s shoulder. “How are you holding up? Do you need medical attention?”

“No. I can manage the breaks. The rest of it …” Joker’s face twisted. “There’s a lot of empty chairs in here. I can’t help thinking if I had been faster, quicker …” He looked down at his legs in frustration.

“We did everything we could, Jeff,” EDI said, and there was no question, her voice was soft, comforting. Almost affectionate. And when had she started calling Joker “Jeff”? And when had he started letting her? Garrus found the questions an intriguing distraction from his own concerns about the rest of the crew. Knowing what had happened to the colonists … He didn’t want to think about what Dr. Chakwas was going through right now, or any of the others.

“Is the ship clean, EDI?” Shepard asked.

Joker sat up straighter, pulling himself together. “Yes, EDI and I purged the systems. The Reaper IFF is online. We can go through the Omega 4 relay whenever you want. And, if you don’t mind a personal comment, I hope it’s sooner rather than later.”

Shepard nodded. “I get that. But we want to be prepared, as well. No sense going in without knowing what we’re doing and not saving anyone.”

“Yeah. I guess.”

“Are we not going to talk about unshackling a damned AI?” Miranda demanded. 

“He did what was necessary to save the ship. I hope that if I had been here in his place, I would have done the same.”

Joker got to his feet with some difficulty, straightening his ballcap. “Thanks, Commander.”

“I assure you,” EDI said, “I am still bound by protocols in my programming. Even if I were not … you are my crewmates.”

“EDI has proven herself trustworthy—and we need all the help we can get. Dismissed,” Shepard said crisply, with a glance toward Garrus that said she didn’t mean him.

Joker limped for the door, injured more badly than he was willing to let on. Shepard would talk him into letting Miranda take a look at him later, Garrus was sure, once everyone had calmed down.

Jacob and Miranda followed, Miranda still steaming a bit, but beginning to settle now that the initial shock had worn away. 

When the doors closed behind them all, Shepard let herself go, bracing her hands on the table and letting her head hang. “I should have been here.”

“You can’t be here all the time. You can’t be everywhere at once, and save everyone. No one can.”

“But I want to, silly as that sounds.” She raised her head to look at him, tears welling in her brown eyes.

Garrus reached out and pulled her to him, folding his arms around her and holding her while she wept. This was what they had done to her, the galaxy, putting the weight of its salvation on her shoulders. They had taught her that everyone was her responsibility, and everything was her fault. If they survived this trip to the Collector base, he was going to take her away somewhere, let her put down those burdens … at least for a little while.


	29. Now

Garrus hesitated in front of Shepard’s door, the bottle of wine heavy in his hands. This was a terrible idea, selfish and inappropriately timed, he told himself. Shepard was preparing for the leap through the Omega 4 relay, for the fight of her life, for whatever she would find remained of her crew, some of them beloved friends. It was no time for personal moments, no time for the kind of perfect night together he wanted, if such a thing was even possible.

But if this was it. If they never came back through the Omega 4, if one or both of them died over there, a distinct possibility, then this was the last chance. Could he surrender himself to battle, fight like he had nothing to lose, knowing that he could have had … everything he’d ever wanted, and he’d been afraid to take the chance?

No. Resolutely, he punched the button for the intercom. 

It took her a few moments to answer, and her voice was breathless. Had she been sleeping? Had he interrupted her much-needed and too rare rest? He could have kicked himself. When the door opened, he had his mouth open to apologize—and then nothing came out but an undignified squeak. She had not been sleeping; she’d been in the shower. And now she stood before him with skin still damp, rivulets of water running down over her bare shoulders, wearing nothing but a thick white towel she had hastily wrapped around herself and knotted just above her breasts. Something primal and hungry inside Garrus wanted nothing more than to leap on her, rip the towel off, and devour her.

He took a deep breath, pushing back that animal instinct with every ounce of control he could drag together. “I … am sorry to interrupt.”

Her eyes were wide, her whole body tense, waiting for him. “Are you?”

Garrus cleared his throat, trying to remember to speak. “I, uh, brought wine.” He gestured with the bottle. “Best I could afford on a vigilante’s salary.”

Shepard smiled, relaxing a bit. “You saying I don’t pay you enough, Vakarian?”

He chuckled, edging past her into the room, reaching for the sound system and punching up the song list he had so carefully picked out all those nights trying to work up the courage to do this. The synth-pop filled the room, music to move to, and he turned toward Shepard for her reaction. 

She lifted an eyebrow and gave a little shake of the head, as though she couldn’t quite believe what was happening.

Well. That was not the reaction he’d been going for. Garrus searched for words in a mind gone totally blank. What was wrong with him? He used to be good at this kind of thing. She wasn’t a turian, but maybe … “If you were a turian,” he said, “I’d be complimenting your waist or your fringe. So, uh … your … hair looks good.” She had almost no hair. It did look good, that wasn’t a lie, but it also looked functionally the same every day. Maybe not the right thing? She was still looking at him with that raised eyebrow, as if she thought he had spontaneously lost his mind. It was entirely possible he had. “And your waist is … very supportive?”

“Garrus.”

He winced. “Is that offensive in human culture? Crap. I knew I should have watched more vids.” Shepard was still looking at him, not moving. “Throw me a line, here, Shepard. I’m drowning out here.”

She laughed, coming toward him. “All right, consider me seduced, smooth talker. Now, shut up and stop worrying.”

“Easy for you to say,” he grumbled.

Reaching out, Shepard punched the music, turning it off. It was a relief to be standing in the silence, with only the familiar sounds of the Normandy around them. She turned to him, her brown eyes soft. “Talk to me.”

“It’s just … I’ve seen so many things go wrong, Zia. My work with C-Sec, what happened with Sidonis, the attack on the Normandy … And I want something to go right. Just this once.”

She lifted a small, soft hand, and touched his cheek. “It already is. You’re here.” Her fingertips trailed across his jaw. 

“I thought maybe … it was too soon, too close to the Omega 4 …”

Zia’s fingers pressed against his mouth, stopping his words. Then she stepped back, her hands going to the knot of the towel, and she let it fall, standing there gloriously, beautifully naked in front of him. “Now, Garrus,” she said, her voice hoarse. “Now while we have a chance. Let’s not waste another minute.”

“No,” he agreed, taking a single step toward her, one hand curving around the back of her head, tilting her head up toward him, even as his head lowered until he could meet her mouth with his. 

Despite the urgency they both felt, this, their first kiss, was unhurried, slow, as they explored each other. Shepard’s hands came up, bunching themselves in the fabric of Garrus’s shirt, and he broke the kiss to tear it impatiently off, tossing it … somewhere. He wasn’t entirely certain where the bottle of wine had gone. It seemed unnecessary now—Shepard was more intoxicating than the finest vintage he had ever tasted.

He bent, hooking one arm behind her knees, and lifted her, carrying her the short distance to the bed, where he laid her reverently across the covers. For all the time he had spent worrying that he might hurt her, now that he was here with her he felt sure, certain. Hastily he stripped off the rest of his clothes and joined her on the bed. 

They lay there together, arms around each other, making small movements of hands and limbs to experience the contrast in their bodies, the sensations of each touch. 

“Garrus.” Zia’s hands were on his face now, drawing his head down to hers, her mouth open for his kiss, and Garrus felt as though he were falling through the bed and through space, drowning in the taste of her. She drew away, pushing him onto his back as she straddled him, leaning down to kiss him again, on the mouth and the mandibles and down across the chest, soft, wet touches of her lips and tongue causing him to shiver. Her hands trailed over his body, her fingers tracing the edges and contours of his carapace.

“Spirits,” he murmured weakly. In all his planning, he hadn’t anticipated her effect on him, the dizzying strength of the desire coursing through him.

“Worth waiting for?” Zia asked. She moved her body against his, and Garrus groaned at the feeling.

“What was I thinking, wasting all that time?” He rolled her over, kissing her neck.

“I wondered that, too.” She arched into his touch as his hands found her breasts, wondering at the heavy softness, the contrasting hardened nipples. Desire surged through him anew at the sounds she made as he explored her, the whimpers and sighs and moans that had sounded so fake in the vids and now here, when it was Shepard making them, were the sweetest music he’d ever heard. 

She moved one leg restlessly up and down his, her soft skin stroking his hard bones. At the same time, she slid intimately against him, the friction sharpening his desire until he couldn’t bear it any longer.

“Zia, I can’t—I need—“

For answer, she arched against him, reaching between them to guide him where he needed to be, and they shuddered in mutual delight as he filled her, moving within her, marveling at the wet heat of her. “Garrus, please. Don’t stop.”

“No.” As if he could have. The weeks, months, years he had waited for this hadn’t prepared him in the least for the real thing, and the dizzy overwhelming pleasure was gathering inside him, tightening and spiraling until— “Spirits. Zia! AH!” He gave a final thrust, even as Zia’s hands clutched at his arms and she groaned his name.

They lay next to one another, looking up at the stars above her bed, holding hands. “Garrus.”

“Yeah?”

“I’m going to want to do this a lot more, so don’t die on the other side of that relay, okay?”

“I’ll do my best.” He propped himself up on one arm, looking down at her beautiful face, silvered in the light from the stars. “Does that mean you promise to come back, too?”

“For this?” She smiled. “Damn straight.”

“Good.” He bent to kiss her, slowly and thoroughly. “Just in case you need further motivation, I think we should do it again.”

“Well, if you insist.”

“Oh, I do. I really do.”


	30. Alive

Shepard tossed and moaned in her sleep. Garrus could make out names—his own, and those of the others who had been with her at the Collector base. Reaching out, he put a hand gently on her shoulder. “I’m here, Zia. I’m here.”

After a moment, she quieted, turning on her side and settling into what appeared to be a deeper sleep. She hadn’t slept since before they went through the Omega 4, and they had come back through—yesterday, the day before? Garrus had lost track. Eventually, he had all but carried her onto the elevator in order to get her to stand down long enough to get some rest, and even at that, it had taken most of a bottle of wine to get her to relax enough to drift off.

Not that he blamed her. For as much as they had dreaded the invasion of the Collector base, the reality had been worse. He could still vividly remember the faces of the colonists trapped in the Reaper pods who had … melted, in front of their eyes, as they stood and watched in horror. After the loss of the first colonist, Shepard had galvanized her people to start breaking the pods open, and in the end they had rescued all their own people and about half a dozen Horizon colonists, but had been too late for the others. It had been personal for them all after that, even the non-humans all too easily able to imagine their own people being used that way next. No one had balked at doing whatever it might take to finish the job.

Thane had taken the survivors back to the ship, where from all accounts they had rallied from their horrific experience and aided Joker and EDI in getting the _Normandy_ operational again.

Next to him, Zia shifted, moaning again, and he reached for her hand. She held on to it as though it was a lifeline, taking it in both of hers and holding it against her chest. Garrus held his breath, waiting to see if she would wake, but she settled, and he breathed a sigh of relief.

Looking at her there, seeing the weariness in her face, the dark smudges under her eyes, Garrus remembered vividly the moment at the end, after the embryonic human Reaper had been defeated, after the Illusive Man had made his pitch to save the Collector base and been denied, when he had come back to consciousness in the middle of the Collector base knowing that the whole place was about to blow and couldn’t find her. How he and Jack had dug frantically through the rubble, neither of them willing to leave without her despite Joker’s increasingly strident pleas through their comms to get out of there. How pale she had been behind her mask when they finally did uncover her, how still and unmoving. How he had been afraid she wouldn’t wake up, then afraid they wouldn’t make it after she had come to and they were running for their lives. Those had been the longest moments of his life, worse even than when it had become clear she wasn’t in the pod with Joker after the destruction of the first _Normandy_.

But now she was here, and he was here. They had survived the trip through the relay, survived the destruction of the Collector base. They had their future ahead of them—and a future without Cerberus, it seemed. After Shepard had rejected the Illusive Man’s plea to retain the base for research, it appeared Cerberus had washed their hands of her and the _Normandy_ at once. It didn’t make sense to Garrus, after what it must have cost Cerberus to rebuild Shepard and recreate the ship, but it seemed that the whole thing had been a plan by the Illusive Man to gain control of the Collector base and learn their secrets. In Shepard’s shoes, Garrus probably would have kept the base—when you had a useful piece of intel, it was worth considering what to do with it. But he couldn’t argue with destroying it, either, especially after having watched those people get melted in their pods.

He turned a little further onto his side, stretching out along the length of Zia’s body, matching his hard edges to her curves, feeling the relief of having her here safe in his arms. There hadn’t been a guarantee that any of them would make it back. They had almost lost Kasumi in the tunnels and Samara while she held a biotic barrier over them against the Seeker swarms. In the end, Zaeed had fallen, the grizzled old mercenary overcome by the Collectors, and Mordin. The salarian had gone down protecting the injured Miranda. Their bodies had been recovered from the Collector ship, the other companions unwilling to leave them behind even in death. Mordin’s body would be returned to Sur’Kesh, to his people, and Zaeed’s would be jettisoned out into space. Garrus imagined he would like that. Especially if his pod were to crash into a Blue Suns ship and cause it to flame out. Chuckling at the thought, Garrus made a mental note to mention the idea to Shepard when she woke.

She was deeply asleep now, her body limp and warm against his. Garrus considered getting up, but he was comfortable and she was soft and alive, her deep breathing a lullaby. He blinked sleepily. Maybe just a little nap.

He awoke to Zia looking down at him. “Hey. You going to sleep forever?”

Garrus had no idea how long he had been asleep. The whole jaunt through the Omega 4 and back had ruined his internal clock. “Why?” he asked groggily. “We have somewhere to be?”

“No. But we might have some better things to do.” She smiled. “Like celebrate being alive.”

“I take it you have some ideas how we should do that.”

She slid against him, and he noticed with some surprise that she was no longer wearing any clothes. “I might at that. Any objections?”

“None at all.”


	31. Business

It was a quite group of companions Shepard gathered around her in the mess. They had come from the memorial service for Zaeed, after which his pod had been jettisoned into space. Now they were gathered around the tables with glasses of Earth whiskey, toasting their fallen comrade. None of them had known Zaeed particularly well—he had kept mostly to himself, and when he had mingled with the rest, he had been … prickly, to say the least. But he had been one of them, and the loss was still sobering. They had all said when they went through the Omega 4 that they were prepared not to come back, but none of them had been prepared for anyone else not to come back. At least, that’s how Garrus felt, and how he suspected the rest of them did as well.

Shepard held out her glass. The liquor shimmered a deep golden brown in the glare of the overhead lights. “To Zaeed. May he find his rest in the stars. And to Mordin. I hope he finds something to do in whatever the salarian version of the afterlife may be.”

“To Mordin and Zaeed,” the rest of them chorused, and drank, a lot or a little according to their natures.

“I’ll say this for the old bastard, he had good taste in booze,” Jack said, refilling her glass. She topped off Grunt’s while she was at it.

Shepard cleared her throat, looking at the two of them with caution. Garrus could tell she wanted to get the business out of the way before they were too drunk to pay attention. “As you know, the Illusive Man’s plan all along was for us to clear the Collector base but leave it for Cerberus.”

There was silence as everyone looked at Miranda, who glared at them all. Garrus couldn’t tell if she was angry at the Illusive Man or just wanted them to stop looking at her.

“And, as you also know,” Shepard continued, “I refused, and I blew that foul place to hell.” There was a grim satisfaction in her voice.

“As you should have,” Samara said.

Grunt … grunted, smacking one fist into the other palm. “Only better thing would have been ripping them all to pieces with our hands.”

Shepard smiled at him. “We’d have been there into the next century.”

“Good thing to do with your time.”

“Yes, but for those of us without the krogan lifespan, an explosion was a far more efficient way to do it.” Grunt subsided, seeming to accept that. “Anyway, I’ve cut off contact with the Illusive Man. Cerberus may or may not be coming to take the _Normandy_ from me, to extract a pound of flesh from me to make up for the money they spent bringing me back from the dead.”

“’You can always judge a man by the quality of his enemies,’” murmured Kasumi. “Oscar Wilde,” she clarified when everyone looked at her. Shepard, Thane, and Miranda nodded as though the name was familiar to them, while everyone else looked mystified.

“Whoever he was, he made sense,” Grunt observed, taking the nearly-empty bottle from Jack’s hand.

Thane smiled. “Sometimes.”

Shepard looked at the group of them. “Do you mind if I get back to business?”

“Not at all, Battlemaster.”

“Thank you.” She rolled her eyes. “So, that’s the situation. We have the ship for now, we’ve pissed off Cerberus, we’re not part of the Alliance …” Looking around at each of them. “Look, each of you went into hell with me, expecting that there was a good possibility you wouldn’t be coming back. I will never forget that, and I owe each of you a debt I can never repay—“

“You have given us enough. More than enough,” Samara told her, and there were solemn nods all around the room.

“Thank you.” There was no sarcasm in Shepard’s voice this time. “But now your obligations to me are ended, and you are free to return to your lives. Or you’re welcome to stay aboard. The choice is yours.”

Silence as everyone looked at each other uncomfortably. At last, Thane cleared his throat. “The next time we have reason to stop at the Citadel, I would like to join my son. Now that— We have a great deal to catch up on.”

“Of course. We can set a course for there first thing, lacking anywhere better to go.”

“I think that’s my stop, too, Shep,” Kasumi told her. “I’ve got some … intriguing job offers now that people know what happened at Donovan Hock's.”

“I’m with you, Battlemaster,” Grunt spoke up. 

Next to him, Jack raised her glass. “Hell, yeah!”

Tali shifted uncomfortably in her seat, started to speak, then settled back.

“Shall we return you to the Migrant Fleet?” Shepard asked her.

“I … Yes, please. I hate to leave you, Shepard.”

“I’ll miss you. But you need to be with your people.”

Tali nodded. “Yes.”

Before anyone else could speak, Joker’s voice came through the speakers. “Shepard?”

“You leaving me, too, Joker?”

“Hell, no. I’m staying with the _Normandy_ … I mean, you, as long as there’s space to fly through. No, we’re coming up on a planet … I should have noticed where we are.”

Shepard frowned. “Joker?”

“It’s the _Normandy_ , Commander. The first one. I thought maybe you might—“

Garrus cast a stricken look at her. He wasn’t sure he wanted to see that surface again, relive that moment when they all realized she was gone and never coming back. But he felt a need to see it, as well, to give closure to that time. What Zia was thinking, he wasn’t certain. Her eyes were wide, her face pale, but she was calm and composed.

“Bring us into orbit, Joker. I’m on my way up.” She looked around the room. “Thank you all. We’ll make the Citadel our next stop, the Migrant Fleet after that. Jacob, Samara, Miranda, if you let me know where you want to be left, we can add your stops to the list.”

Garrus was surprised she assumed Miranda would want to go, but then, she had been the one most affected by the break with Cerberus, and the one most closely tied with the company, so maybe Shepard wanted her off the ship for security reasons. Samara would return to her work as a justicar. And Jacob … well, Garrus had no clue what Jacob wanted, but he certainly wasn’t going to miss him when he left.

When the others had filed out of the room, he went across the room to Shepard, putting a hand on her shoulder. “You going to be okay?”

“I think so. You?”

“As long as you promise me never to die again, I can handle anything.”

“It’s a deal.” She smiled and turned her face up for a kiss to seal her promise.


	32. Chapter 32

“Tali, are you sure you don’t want to come with us?” Shepard asked.

The quarian shook her head decidedly in the negative. “I saw enough of that planet the first time. It was—more than enough.” She shivered, wrapping her arms around herself.

Garrus didn’t blame her. He didn’t particularly want to see the planet again, either, to witness the wreckage of the first _Normandy_ and hear again in memory the hissing of the snow as the burning pieces of the ship fell into it, the screams of pain of the wounded and dying, the sobs from his fellow crewmembers, frightened and cold … to relive the moment when they opened the pod and discovered Shepard wasn’t in it. Dr. Chakwas had taken charge that day, her calm efficiency keeping them all together. She didn’t want to see it again, either, preferring to keep her memories in the past where they belonged, as she said.

But Shepard needed to go. She wanted to find some trace of the crewmembers who had died, something to return to their families, and apparently she was carrying a plaque aboard with them to commemorate the loss of the ship and those of the crew who had gone with it. And if Shepard was going, Garrus was. Not only because he agreed that the mission was important—but because he wanted to be there for Zia in case it was too much for her, seeing it all for the first time.

“You ready?” she said to him now.

“You go ahead and suit up. I’ll be right down.”

As the elevator doors closed behind her, he turned toward the cockpit. Obviously, there was no question of Joker going down to the planet’s surface—and he had been unconscious most of the time as they waited for rescue, so his memories of it would be hazy anyway—but Garrus wanted to make sure he was all right.

“Get out of here, Vakarian,” Joker warned as soon as the cockpit doors slid open. “I’m fine.”

“You sound fine,” Garrus agreed.

Joker swiveled his chair around. “I don’t need your sarcasm. Look, you want to go down there and dance around in the snow, you be my guest.”

“You’re the one who brought us here.”

The pilot winced as the shot hit home. “Yeah, so, I figured … closure, right?”

“For you, or for her?”

“Does it matter?”

Garrus’s comm link crackled. “You on your way?”

“Be right down,” he told Shepard. “Look,” he said to Joker, “she doesn’t blame you. I think you should stop blaming yourself.”

“Easy for you to say.”

“Hey, I left, too. She told Kaidan to go, made him, to come up here after you herself. You think we don’t carry that guilt, that we could have saved her if we’d tried harder? You were stuck up here, trying to save the ship, unable to move. You’re the only one who couldn’t have done anything other than what you did. And you and I both know that she would rather have died trying to save you than lived knowing you had died.” He thought of Zaeed, and Mordin, and Ashley, and of the way Zia called their names in her nightmares. “Any of us.”

“I know that.” For a moment, it looked like Joker was going to say more, but it passed. “Look, you’d better go.”

“Yeah. You going to be okay?”

Joker shrugged. “When am I ever?” And he turned his chair around, ending the conversation.

Zia was watching as Garrus approached the shuttle. “Joker all right?”

Garrus smiled, repeating Joker’s words. “When is he ever?”

“Point.” She took a deep breath and squared her shoulders. “Let’s get this over with.”

The planet was as cold as Garrus remembered, the chill seeping into his bones even through his armor, and the scene as gruesome as he had feared. Twisted pieces of wreckage lay everywhere, their snowcover blown away by the sharp winds, and larger pieces rose from the snow like mountains.

Shepard carried the plaque with her, walking slowly, almost reverently, toward the side of the ship, curving up into the sky. She ran her fingers along the word “Normandy” emblazoned on the metal, then stepped back and scraped away the snow with her foot before placing the plaque down. “So that we can never forget,” she said softly.

Garrus would never forget anyway, but if it made the humans feel better to leave another hunk of cold metal down here on the planet, that was no business of his.

Touching the side of the ship once more, affectionately, Shepard turned around. “Now for the hard part.”

“It’s all the hard part.”

She reached out and gripped his hand, a quick gesture. “You have the list of casualties?”

“Yes.”

“Let’s see what we can find.”

It was torture for her, Garrus could see, sifting through the rubble, turning over bodies looking for dog tags, prying pieces of armor out of the ice. The cold had kept the process of decay slow—most of the dead looked as though they had only just departed, rather than having spent the last two years lying in the midst of the ice fields. Shepard’s sense of responsibility hung in the air, almost heavy enough to touch. These had been her people, and she felt a fierce guilt over their loss. Not that she could have changed anything, kept the Collectors from coming screaming through space toward them, but she wanted to have been able to.

Near what had been the CIC, they found a cracked datapad near the body of Navigator Pressly. Shepard lifted it, touching a finger hesitantly to its surface. To her surprise and Garrus’s, the screen lit up. Most of what they could find was garbled beyond recognition, but a few words stood out, enough to paint the picture of a man who had feared and distrusted the aliens aboard the _Normandy_ at first, and then grown to know and like them over time. His final recorded words were: “I’m proud to say … die for any member of this crew, regardless of what world they were born on.”

They stood over the datapad in silence for a long time. It was so still Garrus could hear the silvery ring of the snowflakes landing on the metal all around them.

At last Shepard looked up, her eyes bright with tears behind the glass of her mask. “This is what we did it for,” she said. “This is why—who we are. Let’s take this back and put it up as a reminder to all of us that people can change, that they can learn to live and work together. And love each other.” She reached for his hand, holding it tightly, even as she clutched the datapad in the other.

“Good idea.” The words came out rusty and thick, pushed past Garrus’s own emotion. He had played chess with Pressly once or twice, never known the man particularly well, but he had felt the gradual shift in his level of friendliness over time—the gradual shift most of the human crew had made, on the first _Normandy_ and the second. 

Shepard shivered, cold even in her hardsuit, and he said, “Shall we go back?”

“Yes.” She glanced around, shivered again, only partially with cold, and nodded. “Yes, let’s. I think we’ve done everything we can here.”

On the way back to the shuttle, Garrus tripped over something buried in the snow. Cursing under his breath—he had been trying to be so careful to avoid disturbing the last rest of any of his former shipmates—he knelt to brush the snow off the object he had tripped on, startled to find the bright red and white of the N7 logo staring up at him. Digging a little further, he pulled out a helmet. Shepard’s helmet, he realized. Had to be. She had been the only N7 on the _Normandy_.

Ahead of him, she turned to call back, “Everything all right?”

“Fine.” Hastily he tucked the helmet into the pack of other mementoes and relics he was carrying. Time enough to show it to her later.


	33. Everything that She Was

In the shuttle, Shepard reached for Garrus’s pack. “What did you find down there? That last thing.”

“It can wait. Maybe back in your room.”

She glanced up at him sharply. “Garrus.”

“Yeah. Okay.” He sighed. “Open it.”

Shepard took the helmet out, turning it on the tips of her gloved fingers. “This is mine.”

“I know.”

“My god. Did you know it was that bad?”

“I didn’t see you.”

She turned the helmet over again, noting the shattered glass of the faceplate, the dents and scorch marks on the outer plastic. “What the hell am I?” she asked, softly, almost to herself.

Garrus was unable to look at her as he engaged the docking mechanism, and wished to the spirits he had made her wait until they were back home before she looked at it. “You’re Zia Shepard,” he told her fiercely. 

“Am I? Look at this, Garrus. If my helmet was in this kind of shape, what must my head have looked like? How much did they have to do to rebuild me? For all I know, maybe I’m just a more sophisticated version of EDI.”

“You can’t think that way. You’ll drive yourself crazy.”

“It didn’t take much,” she muttered under her breath, turning the helmet over in her hands again. As soon as the shuttle was docked, she was out of it, bolting for the elevators. Garrus had a fairly good idea where she was going, so he followed her once he’d had a chance to stow the bags of mementoes they had gathered so carefully on the planet’s surface. He could hear her shouting as soon as the elevator doors opened.

“Explain this, then! If there was so much ‘organic material’, how is my helmet in this condition?”

“The helmet took the brunt of the impact. Well-made piece of equipment,” Miranda commented. When the doors to her office opened, she glanced at Garrus, but returned her attention to the helmet almost immediately. “Believe it or not, Shepard, I never saw this. You’d been on ice for a couple of weeks before Liara managed to smuggle you out of the Shadow Broker’s clutches and get you to Cerberus. You looked pretty bad then—I’ve never pretended otherwise.”

“Just tell me how much of me is me, damn it! Stop dancing around the question.”

Miranda looked up from the helmet, meeting Shepard’s eyes squarely. “60%, give or take.’

“60%.” Shepard seemed shocked. “I’m … half machine.”

“Not exactly. We filled in those parts that were missing or too damaged to repair with cybernetics in some places, yes, but in other places we used grafts from other humans.”

“Parts,” Shepard repeated. “Missing parts.”

Garrus stepped further into the room, putting his hand on Shepard’s shoulder. “It’s a lot to take in, Miranda.”

“Yes. Sorry. It was a lot of work, Shepard. You were—you were dead. But the Illusive Man was committed to bringing back Commander Shepard, everything that she was, from the inside out. He spared no expense—and I don’t think I have to tell you, those expenses were massive.”

“So … I’m a robot.”

“No. Shepard, you’re no different from a biotic. They have their implants, you have yours.” Miranda moved toward Shepard, looking down earnestly into her eyes. “You are yourself. We didn’t change you or alter you in any way. I promise you that.”

“I …” Seeming dazed, Shepard took the helmet from Miranda’s hands. “I—Thank you. That will be all.” She turned and left.

“That was the truth?” Garrus asked Miranda once she was gone.

“It was. The Illusive Man was very clear that anything that changed who she was compromised the chances the mission would succeed—that we needed the real Commander Shepard, everything that she was. I did a very good job,” Miranda added, stating it for the fact it was.

“Yes, you did,” Garrus assured her before hastening to follow Zia. He was just too late to catch her before the elevator doors closed, but he knew where she was going, so he followed her up again, keying in the code to the quarters that were basically theirs by this point.

He found her sitting on the couch, staring at the helmet on the table in front of her as if mesmerized. “Parts, Garrus. Missing parts. She was talking about me—as if I was Frankenstein’s monster.”

“Whose monster?”

She shook her head impatiently. “Never mind. It’s a human thing.”

He nodded. “Right. Look, Zia, Miranda’s a scientist. She looked at the situation as a problem to be solved, and I think sometimes she forgets you weren’t with her every step of the way.”

“Do you believe her? That they didn’t—change me?”

Garrus sat down on the couch next to her, gently turning her face toward him. “Of course I do. Not just because Miranda doesn’t lie very well, but because I know you, inside and out, and you are the Zia Shepard I fell in love with.”

Her brown eyes widened. “You did? You fell in love with me?” she asked softly, her voice filled with wonder.

“Yes. Just like you did with me,” he added, remembering what she had said on the planet, about learning to love another species. “I love you, Zia. If you were different, I would know. And I would tell you, I promise.”

“I know you would.” There was absolute trust in her eyes, and Garrus quivered under the power of that look. How he had gotten so lucky as this, he didn’t know.

Still holding her face between his hands, he kissed her, soft and slow. Then, piece by piece, he removed her hardsuit and everything she wore underneath it, kissing the skin as he bared it, stroking her until she was gasping and sighing with her pleasure, all of her fear and distress washed away by sensation.

Her legs parted beneath him as he settled himself gently on top of her, the intimate friction exciting them both before he slid inside, taking his time, making every movement last. He wanted her to feel that he had touched every part of her, that he saw and loved her for everything that she was.

“Garrus.” Her eyes were shining with tears, and she pulled his head down to hers for another kiss even as her body tightened around him, and they rode to the top of the peak together.


	34. Debrief

Unable to stop himself, Garrus gathered Zia up in his arms as tightly as he could the moment she stepped out of the airlock. Normally they tried to keep their relationship low-key in public, but this was hardly a normal situation. He held her at arm’s length, looking her over. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine.”

“Are you sure? That was … I was out of my mind worrying about you, not knowing where you were.”

She smiled, cupping his mandible with one hand. “You’re sweet.”

“Commander Shepard.” Dr. Chakwas stood behind Garrus. “You need to come upstairs to the med bay and get checked out.”

“Yes, I think that’s a good idea.”

“I’m coming, too,” Garrus said, clinging to her hand.

Shepard shook her head. “I’ll talk to you later. I have to be debriefed, and that’s not … I have to talk to Hackett myself.” She glanced at Chakwas over his shoulder. “He’s on his way, isn’t he?”

“Yes. Should be here within the hour. Just enough time for me to run all the tests I need.”

Squeezing Garrus’s hand, Shepard said, “Wait for me upstairs. I’ll come up as soon as I’m finished.”

Reluctantly, he let her go. He never wanted to have to do that again. The days she had been gone, out of contact, had been a nightmare, thinking he had lost her again. If it were up to him, he’d spirit her away, run off with the _Normandy_ and all its crew if he had to, off to some quiet planet on the edge of space where no one would think to look for them. They were all due a good long break, weren’t they?

It seemed to take forever for her to finish with the debrief, every passing moment making his carapace itch more with anxiety. What had happened down there? It was supposed to be a simple rescue mission, get into a batarian prison and rescue a doctor working with the Alliance, and it had ended on a space station by blowing up a mass effect relay and destroying a batarian colony. Something hadn’t been right from the start, as far as Garrus was concerned, and he wished now he had been able to convince her not to go in alone the way the Alliance had demanded she do. If only he’d been with her—

Behind him, the doors finally opened, and his long legs took him to her in just a couple of strides, pulling her close. “Spirits, Zia, don’t ever do that to me again. I swear, I am not letting you out of my sight from now on.”

She cleared her throat, gently disentangling herself from his embrace. “About that …”

“What?”

“I have to go to Earth. They’re convening a tribunal.”

“The batarians?”

Shepard nodded. “They’re furious, and rightfully so. God, Garrus.” There were tears in her brown eyes. “I didn’t want it to end that way. I didn’t! I tried to stop it. But Keniston and her people were indoctrinated. They were going to let the Reapers through. The invasion is coming. It could have come today, if I hadn’t destroyed that relay. One colony versus the safety of the whole galaxy. I had to make that decision in a split second, and I picked the greater threat. But how can I convince the batarians that threat was real when no one in the galaxy even believes in the Reapers? One day they’re just going to be here, and no one is going to be ready.”

“You will.”

“That’s not enough.”

It wasn’t. Garrus held her close, letting her get her tears out. When the storm had passed, he looked down at her. “Don’t go.”

“What do you mean, don’t go?”

“What I said. Don’t go to the tribunal. If the Reapers are waiting out there, just looking for the mass relay that will bring them into our space, you can’t afford to be stuck on Earth in a lot of pointless meetings. You have to be out there getting ready.”

“I don’t disagree in theory, but in practice, I can’t do anything alone. If I’m going to prepare anyone, I have to start with Earth and the Alliance. I know people, my mother knows people—between us, maybe I can get someone to listen.”

He made a noise of disgust and impatience. “Still on about the Alliance? They’ll never move fast enough, Shepard, even if you could convince them of the threat.”

“There are channels, Garrus! It starts with placating the batarians, and I do that by going where I’m told and answering the questions that are posed to me and explaining the situation.”

“All they’ll hear is fairy tales! Look how quickly and conveniently the entire galaxy forgot the existence of Sovereign.”

“Anderson didn’t. Hackett didn’t.”

“Anderson and Hackett are soldiers. They understand. The kind of people who convene tribunals aren’t soldiers and they will never understand the decisions you’ve made.”

They glared at each other, and then Zia blinked and looked away. “Tell me what you would do, then, Garrus. The batarians won’t understand, the Alliance won’t understand, the Council won’t understand. Do you want me to just sit on my hands and wait and then try to take down the Reapers by ourselves, the _Normandy_ against an entire ancient civilization? It took the Citadel defenses and the Alliance fleet to take down just one of them!”

He started to answer, but he realized he would just be shooting off his mouth, that he really didn’t have the answer. “Come to Palaven,” he said at last, desperately. “My people are fighters; they’ll believe.”

“Do they? Do they believe in Sovereign?”

Garrus was forced to admit that it seemed they didn’t.

“Then I have to do this my way, Garrus. I have to go to Earth and sit for the tribunal.”

He wanted to argue, to keep her from going. Something in him was paralyzed with terror at the idea of letting her go again. But she was right, she needed to do this her way, and if the Alliance were ever going to believe that the Reapers were a true threat, she was the only one who could convince them. “I know you do,” he said at last, painfully. Holding out his arms, he held her close. “Let me go with you.”

“No.” She leaned back to look up at his face. “It wouldn’t be safe for you. I’ll be dropping off every non-human, and everyone who has close Cerberus ties, before we go. I’m—I’m taking the _Normandy_ back to the Alliance as a gesture of goodwill.”

“Do you have to? Joker would land somewhere out of the way and wait for your signal, and he would come for you if you needed it. We could keep the _Normandy_ , fly it away somewhere …”

Zia reached up, touching his mandible lightly with her fingertips, stroking it gently. Garrus quivered under the touch. “And when the Reapers come?”

He perched on the back of the couch, pulling her with him, resting his forehead against hers. “Will it ever end? Will we ever be able to rest, to stop fighting, to just … live?”

“Yes. Someday, we will.”

He liked the assurance in her voice, even if it wasn’t true. “Are you lying?”

She gave a soft laugh. “Probably. But it sounds good.” Taking his face in both hands, she looked deep into his eyes. “This much I do promise—if I ever retire, it’ll be with you.”

“I’ll take it.” Pulling her close, he kissed her. “I won’t see you again for—“

“A long time. Tribunals are never fast.”

“Then … let’s make tonight last us as long as we can.”


	35. Home to Palaven

With Shepard gone to Earth, taking the _Normandy_ with her as a peace offering to the Alliance, Garrus had thought he might find himself at loose ends. But instead he felt an urgency—if Shepard was going to be locked away on Earth, unable to do anything but await the tribunal and the batarians’ convenience, someone had to be out here preparing for the arrival of the Reapers. He couldn’t forget how chillingly close the Reapers had come already. If Shepard hadn’t arrived on that space station, they would already be here, the war begun before half the galaxy was aware it was coming.

She had left him on the Citadel, and he considered going to his superiors in C-Sec, or to the Council. But the Council had never listened to Shepard—they were responsible for the disappearance of Sovereign from the official records of the Battle of the Citadel, after all—why would they listen to him? And C-Sec had no real power. There was no help to be had there. He did drop in to see Captain Bailey, who had helped Shepard, and Thane, and mentioned that beefing up security and preparing for a major galaxy-wide threat might not be a bad idea.

Bailey looked at him with weary blue eyes. “We’ve got our hands full just dealing with everyday stuff here in Zakera Ward. You think we have time to do the rest of C-Sec’s job for them?”

“No,” Garrus admitted. “I don’t, really. But I know no one else is going to listen to me, and I’m hoping a word in your ear will at least help when the Reapers come.”

“I’ll keep my ear out,” Bailey agreed, after a long hard look at Garrus to make sure his leg wasn’t being pulled. “I remember Sovereign, unlike many here. If there’s anything I can do to prepare, I’ll do it.”

“All I can ask. Thanks.” Garrus shook his hand.

“What will you do?”

Much as it pained him, there was only one option left to him. “I’m going home to Palaven.”

“Good luck.”

“I’ll need it,” Garrus agreed.

Little as he wanted to throw himself on his father’s mercy, the turians were the race most likely to be able and willing to mobilize against the Reapers. Garrus had never been particularly persuasive, and especially not where his father was concerned, but if Shepard could do it, if she could face the Alliance and the batarians and hold firm to her principles, he could face his father and the rest of the turian hierarchy.

He arrived on Palaven to find little had changed. His sister Solana still worked hard and was twice the turian Garrus had ever been, his father still was never satisfied with her performance, and he greeted Garrus with a weary sigh. “So, another experiment with your human has failed, I see. And now you are back to live on my charity until such time as you ‘turn your life around’.” He didn’t bother to add that Garrus’s last attempt at turning his life around had been the decision to become a merc on Omega, and had nearly gotten Garrus killed. He didn’t need to. Every disappointed look Garrus had missed while he was off-world was there in his voice.

“It’s a little more nuanced than that, Dad. She’s been called back to Earth for an important tribunal.”

His father snorted. “You mean the batarians are calling for her head on a spike. Everyone in the galaxy knows what she did.”

“But everyone in the galaxy doesn’t know why! You have to listen to me. The Reapers are real—and they’re coming.”

Garrus didn’t expect to be taken seriously. But suddenly his father was looking at him, a long, searching look that really saw Garrus for the first time in a very long while. Abruptly, he said, “Tell me everything.”

So Garrus did. Sitting at the table with his father and sister, he started at the beginning, with Saren and the geth and Eden Prime and the Prothean beacon, and kept going, all the way up to the Alpha relay and the close call that had been. When he was finished, they sat over their empty dinner plates, staring at him in dismay.

“You have seen all of this with your own eyes?”

“Not all, but more than enough. I saw Saren at the battle of the Citadel; I saw Sovereign. That was … like nothing I’ve ever seen before. I’m— The galaxy isn’t ready. I’m not sure it ever could be, but wasting these past few years pretending it’s not coming hasn’t helped.”

“Then what can we do?” Solana asked. “You sound as though you think we should give up.”

“Give up!? Never. We mobilize. We prepare. We take the knowledge we have and we use it in whatever way we can.”

His father got to his feet. “Come with me.”

“Where?”

“We are going to see the Primarch.”

“The Primarch?” Garrus felt a bit slow sitting here echoing everything his father was saying, but this reaction was so far from the skepticism he had anticipated he wasn’t sure he was really experiencing it, or if he was asleep and this was some sort of dream.

“Are you serious about mobilizing, or do you want to sit there and wring your hands?”

“Mobilize,” Garrus said hastily, getting up. “Definitely.”

He followed his father and found himself in the entirely unexpected position of giving advice to the Primarch of Palaven on how to prepare for the Reaper invasion. And when he walked out of the Primarch’s office, he had the even more unexpected position of heading a task force to oversee Palaven’s preparations. The Primarch had been a tough sell, but the weight of Garrus’s father’s inexplicable sudden belief in his son’s veracity, knowledge, and capabilities had eventually tipped the balance.

It was an odd feeling, to suddenly have the safety of his entire species on his shoulders. He wished he could have reached Shepard on Earth to compare notes and tell her that he maybe finally understood. Someday, he hoped. Someday soon.


	36. Reapers

“Garrus!” His sister’s voice was urgent; reminiscent of so many mornings in their childhood, when Garrus would try for a few minutes’ extra sleep and she would be impatient to get going.

“In a minute,” he groaned.

“You have to get up now.” 

The sharpness of her tone, the fear in it, brought him to full wakefulness. He got quickly out of bed and left the room, squinting at her in the darkness. It was hours before either of them needed to be up and going anywhere. “What’s wrong? Is it Dad?”

“No. Garrus, look.” She turned the screen of her personal terminal around so that he could see it. At first, he wasn’t certain what he was seeing. Some kind of vid game? He had never known Solana to play games, but all sorts of things seemed to have changed in his last absence. Then he looked more closely. He had seen beings, structures … _things_ like that before. They were Reapers.

“What’s happening? Where is that?”

“It’s …” Solana swallowed, turning to him and putting a hand on his shoulder. “It’s Earth.”

“Earth?” he repeated blankly. “No, that can’t be. They were in batarian space before, how could they be in human—“ And then it struck him, like a blow from a concussive round. Shepard. They had gone to Earth first because of Shepard, because there was no one in the galaxy they wanted dead more—because no one else in the galaxy posed anywhere near the kind of threat she did. And because they didn’t want any other exceptional humans thinking they could stand up against the Reapers and succeed. 

“I’m so sorry,” Solana whispered.

It was on the tip of Garrus’s tongue to snap at her, to tell her it wasn’t possible for Shepard to be dead. But of course, it was possible. In fact, it was probable. Shepard was being held at Alliance headquarters, which would have been one of the highest priority targets for the Reapers. They would have destroyed it. He sat down in front of the terminal, peering more closely at the carnage on the screen. “London”, it said. Garrus had heard of London—an important Earth city. It was being decimated. If the Reapers were hitting that this hard, what were the odds that one person in an even higher priority target area would survive? Shepard had taken the Normandy back to Earth with her, as a peace offering to the Alliance. So Joker was dead, too. The Reapers knew the Normandy. He put a hand over his face, the weight of his grief and despair pressing down on him. 

Solana squeezed his shoulder. “Garrus, we need you. You know more about these things than anyone else—“ She caught herself before she could say “living”. “We need your help if we’re going to prepare for this.”

He lifted his head to look at her. “Prepare for it? Do you see that screen? Do you see what’s happening? And that’s just in the part we can see. They’re running a loop because the communications relays were knocked out. You know what must have happened after that. How do you prepare for that?”

“Yesterday you thought you could. Yesterday you were full of plans for your task force and what you were going to need to do.”

“Yesterday Shepard was alive,” he whispered, feeling the depth of sorrow settling back on his shoulders.

“I know you admired her, but—“

“No. I didn’t admire her. I mean, I did, but that was only part of it. I loved her, Solana.”

“Yes, of course you did. She was your good friend.”

He frowned, wondering how it was possible that his feelings for Shepard didn’t hang about him in a cloud for everyone to see. “She was my good friend, and my commander, and my—“ His what? Lover seemed inadequate, girlfriend trivial. “She was my everything, Solana. I loved her in every way possible—and she loved me.”

“A human? I mean … I’m sorry, I’m just surprised. I didn’t realize …”

“Apparently not. I suppose I haven’t been a very good brother, have I?”

“You’ve been busy.”

“Too busy, if it meant I kept such an important part of my life from you.” He looked at her closely. “What about you? What parts of your life have I missed?”

Touched by his words, Solana reached for his hand. Then she glanced over his shoulder at the screen and the tension and fear returned to her. “There’s no time now, Garrus. We need your help now. We’ll talk later.”

“Will there be a later?”

“Would Commander Shepard have asked that question?”

Garrus was forced to admit that she would not have. Shepard had always believed that she would succeed at whatever impossible task she had set herself to. At least, she had put on that face with everyone but him. He would have to do the same, holding back his own doubts and fears in order to build up the confidence of those around him. 

He stood up, switching off the terminal, blackness replacing the looped scenes of carnage. “You’re right, Solana. She wouldn’t have. Thank you.”

His sister nodded. “I’m sorry she’s gone, Garrus. I would have liked to have met her.”

“I would have liked that, too.” He put his arms around her, holding her tight. “I … love you. You know that?”

She twisted her head to look up at him in surprise. Turians weren’t known for spontaneous declarations or gestures of affection. “I love you, too,” she said at last.

“Good. Now, go get dressed. They’ll need both of us out there.”

The despair he had felt earlier wasn’t gone. The loss of Shepard, the sudden strike of the Reapers, hovered like a shadow at the back of his mind. But he would not dwell on it. Not now. Maybe someday when there was time, he would break down and cry. For now, he would honor her memory as it deserved to be honored—by getting out there and figuring out a way to kick some Reaper ass.


End file.
